


what cultivation technique did you use to make me love you?

by RenderedReversed



Series: Things I Probably Won't Finish [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Eventual Romance I swear, Hogwarts School of Cultivation, Jianghu AU, M/M, Martial Arts, Master of Death Harry Potter, Mentor Tom Riddle, Slow Build, What Was I Thinking?, Wuxia, Xianxia AU, still trying to cover all my bases
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-05-31 19:23:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 37,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6484423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RenderedReversed/pseuds/RenderedReversed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where magic doesn’t exist, supernatural power goes by another name. Hogwarts is not a school of witchcraft and wizardry but of cultivation, and new student Harry Potter has been scouted by the venerable Grand Master Riddle for his mysterious potential in martial arts.</p><p>Little does he know, the ‘power the Dark Lord knows not’ takes on a different meaning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the xianxia novel Tale of Demons and Gods (as well as others; honorable mention to Coiling Dragon)! I've recently been addicted to wuxia/xianxia novels...
> 
>  **Wuxia and xianxia** novels are Chinese novels about martial arts, where xianxia is the "magical" version of wuxia, with spells, immortals, etc. that focuses on cultivation via philosophy/Taoism. An example is the classic Journey to the West with Sun Wukong. 
> 
> You don't need to have any prior knowledge to enjoy xianxia/wuxia novels, though if there is something that lacks context clues/isn't immediately obvious I will be sure to put it in a footnote at the bottom. I'm just a recent fan (and not even Chinese), so if I do something weird that _isn't_ conventional xianxia, forgive me as I twist traditions.

“Where did you send me this time, Death?” Harry muttered.

Ever since he had become the Master of Death in his first life, his existence had been stuck in the cycle of reincarnation. Time and time again, into the past or into the future, Harry had been inserted in all manners of different situations. He had been born a girl as many times as he had been born a boy. From the most rural of villages to the most concentrated urban centers, he’d been born on every continent at least more than a dozen times each.

Time was not linear. Once, Harry had been born as a little boy living in ancient Mesopotamia, and another time he had been born in the 35th century United States. By and large he’d stopped wondering when it would end—the entity that he’d become acquainted with seemed to get some cosmic sort of amusement out of it all.

What Harry _really_ wondered was what sort of life he’d be living now. Rarely was he ever given the chance to live a peaceful life. Something always happened. He’d fought everything from aliens to muggles to _zombies_ —not inferi, _zombies_ —and so he had enough experience to make an educated guess that the lives he lived did not necessarily take place in one universe.

Muggle multi-verse theory. He was familiar with that, now. But regardless of however it _normally_ worked, whatever was the _true_ answer, Harry knew he would never find an escape on his own. Death sent him wherever they pleased. If there was a door out of here, Death had the sole copy of the key, and they weren’t going to hand it over anytime soon.

Harry was, after all, the only occupant of the being’s world. What world of the afterlife there was, Death had no power over, and the earthly realm that humans lived in was something like beneath their dinner table. They rarely went there, and if they did it was because they had ‘dropped’ something. They were not a deity to be worshipped, to lord over the mortals below—their job, simply enough, was that of the ferryman’s, bringing souls from life to death.

That was why Harry wasn’t angry with them. He was somewhat tired of living over and over again, but he could take breaks in limbo when he wanted to. The train would come whenever he got too bored. He could not see those who had passed, but he’d long come to terms with that, too. It was a part of life—to meet and to part ways, momentarily crossing and walking the same path before taking different turns down the fork in the road. That was okay.

Death’s sense of emotions was vague and maybe even just Harry’s imagination, but he believed that any being with sentience could feel lonely. If Harry could abate some of that loneliness, then they were some form of friends. Besides, it wasn’t like Death was malicious or sadistic. They simply…were. He found happiness as often as he did sorrow in his lives, pain as much as there was laughter.

Another thing was that, even though he’d _called it_ reincarnation, Harry wasn’t always…born. He usually started off at a young age, but that also wasn’t always the case. This time—he looked down at his hands, finding it too dark to see very well but the outline and shape was small and still developing. There were calluses, rough in the spots that rubbed against tools and rags, but at least he had all ten fingers this time.

The place he was in was…very small. But his body fit, and he felt that if he stood up then he would just barely brush the ceiling of it at the right spot. It was not entirely straight, the ceiling. Rather, it moved down at a slant like the roof of a house, but he couldn’t possibly be in an attic. So where was he?

There was a door to his right that some light shone through the bottom. At his side was some sort of desk surface, though the room he was in was too small to house an actual desk. It must be some type of bedside table, or cabinet. Placed on top in some manner of orderliness were three plastic toy soldiers, a cardboard box, a near-empty-but-not-quite crinkled water bottle, and some other miscellaneous trinkets.

They looked like objects that were picked up somewhere rather than bought. There was no rhyme or reason to their identity, just that they all existed in the same room placed on the same surface and were under the (presumably) same ownership. Harry reached out, picking up a toy soldier that fit a good deal better in his child hands.

He wiggled his toes. All ten were there. When he shifted, he could hear the creak of the cot so he knew he wasn’t deaf. Very quietly he made some noise to test if he was mute—his voice was that of a young boy’s yet gone through puberty, but it worked. All of his limbs seemed to be in working order, and that he had the youth of a child probably saved him from back pain he would’ve gotten sleeping on the poor excuse of a bed he had.

The final test was the test of magic. Harry reached inside himself—done absently with the experience a supreme expert would have—and tried to summon up the well of magic circulating within his magical core. Wandless magic was not difficult for him. Unlike popular knowledge, wandless ability was not the mark of a powerful core—it took expertise and skill. If not possessing a great understanding of magic, then practice similar to flexing a muscle would suffice.

Now _tried_ being the key word, of course, because Harry discovered he had no magical core. Rather, there was something else instead…not necessarily attached to his soul like a leech or a compartment, but _outside_ like a container.

He had never seen this before. And, well, that was saying something.

Harry tried probing the container. It stretched a bit, but it was more like a thick wall of rubber than the thin body of a balloon. It was also protective in nature, though from the well of knowledge ingrained within his mind, Harry knew as it was now it was actually rather flimsy. He imagined it could be strengthened somehow, but he didn’t yet know the methods to do so.

It wasn’t the first time he had been without a magical core. It also wasn’t the first time he had a _different_ power than magic—but it was the first time he had seen something of this nature, and being in a dark and enclosed space really didn’t help.

 _Really,_ Harry mused, _where am I?_

 _“The cupboard under the stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey,”_ a mild voice supplied in his mind. “ _Master, we thought this would be a pleasant trip for you.”_

“How generous of you,” Harry said aloud. Death’s laughter sounded like wind blowing through a chamber of bones. “I suppose that’s all you’re going to tell me.”

_“We could tell you more, but you wouldn’t understand any of it. The naming system of the universe is beyond your comprehension.”_

Even Death had a system. Harry acquiesced the point using silence as a reply, and the presence of his friend soon faded to a distant murmur. Death didn’t take breaks—their job was endless; there was an infinite amount of souls to ferry and but only infinite power to ferry them with. Or at least, that was what he was told, but there were some things that Harry as a mortal would not understand. An eternal being as Death was on an entirely different level, even if they existed within the same scope.

English, then. It had taken awhile for him to learn enough languages where he would be able to get by from the get-go—and that wasn’t accounting dialects yet; ‘getting by’ was closer to ‘yes, no, thank you’ than anything. 10th century English was vastly different from 20th century English, and 30th century English was another beast, never mind whether it was across the pond or on a different planet.

He was currently on a 5-life streak, according to Death. Harry wasn’t one to keep track of these things, but Death’s only entertainment was Harry—ergo, he had an extra set of eyes for the trivialities.

Very well; first things first—gather information. And what better way to gather information than to live? Children lived to learn, Harry mused with a rather sardonic grin.

* * *

The world was divided into two realms—the _jianghu_ , and the _yamen_. _Jianghu_ was a distinctly Chinese term inherited like any other French or German word that lacked a smooth translation; _yamen_ , as its effective opposite, was also used in the same context.

The _jianghu_ took up more physical land due to its nature. The _yamen_ , with technological advances, could house a higher number of residents and facilities—it was the ‘modern’ world, the world where the people’s power lied in science and digitalization, computers and their components.

 _Yamen_ meant something along the lines of government office or administration, which was accurate enough. Simply, the _yamen_ had governments and bureaucratic hierarchy. The _jianghu_ did not.

Tom Riddle was born in the _yamen_ , but he had the capability to live in the _jianghu_. It had been his one true desire as a child—it was a place that, in summary, one could live by one’s own power. Those who were strong flourished at the top, and those who were weak survived at the bottom.

Vast lands stretched the visual scope of the sky, tall mountains stood as obstacles, homes, and places to train. Rivers ran clean and unobstructed; those who fought, fought for their own reasons and purposes. The _jianghu_ was the home of martial artists, those who had the capability to cultivate their martial power and ascend from their human restrictions. They were the peak of humanity—power equal to any weapon those in the _yamen_ could create.

Well, not _all_ of them. Just like how a bullet was stronger than an arrow, a bomb stronger than a hand grenade, not all martial artists were born equal and not all martial artists could climb to the peak of power. Usually, those born in the _jianghu_ had the natural advantage, but Tom was an exception. Born to powerless parents in the _yamen_ , he had an abnormal talent, and soon had the strength to dominate much of the _jianghu_.

So Tom Riddle grew up into Voldemort, the leader of the Dark Sect known as the Death Eaters. They were infamously known for straying from the ‘pure’ path of cultivation, using dark and immoral means to obtain their power. And, while that may be true for most of the normal Death Eaters, those at the top—Voldemort and his Inner Circle—knew differently. They were the only masters who comprehended the true path of darkness.

An alliance of several sects was made to combat the Death Eaters. They were known as the Order of the Phoenix, lead by Grand Master Albus Dumbledore. Through some mysterious and murky means, Voldemort perished, and without his leadership the Order was able to suppress the Death Eaters. They were not entirely gone—as a Dark Sect, they were experts at survival in the shadows—but suppressed enough that the alliance disbanded, claiming the evil had been vanquished from the land.

With the end to the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore also passed down his Heavenly Phoenix Sect to a successor and instead became the Headmaster of Hogwarts, a neutral school of cultivation for aspiring martial artists. Several Grand Masters also lived and taught here, so naturally all new martial artists desired to become students in hopes of becoming their disciples.

The acceptance rate was terrible, because Hogwarts only accepted those with a high potential in martial arts and a strong soul realm. These two things were not mutually exclusive, but the chances of meeting the requirements as an examinee were not more than one in a hundred thousand, if not less.

And now the annual examination was taking place. Before they could even be applicants, aspiring martial artists had to either be recommended or prove their capability through a series of tests, the main goal of which was to find the exam location. It took place at a different location every year, and in the vast lands of the _jianghu_ , a simple guess was not going to cut it.

There were usually at least two or three Grand Masters hidden, but present during the examination week. If there was a particularly brilliant student, rumor has it that they would be personally invited by a Grand Master to become their disciple. That wish existed in the hearts of all the applicants—to meet a Grand Master! To learn powerful cultivation techniques! Not one disciple of a Grand Master had ever failed in becoming well known.

Unknown to many, but this year, the Headmaster of Hogwarts had come to watch. It could be said that he was expecting someone…so much so that he would bear the presence of Grand Master Riddle, another instructor of the school.

Tom Riddle and Albus Dumbledore were notoriously on bad terms with each other. Rarely were they ever in the same room at the same time despite the fact that they were colleagues. Not even dinner at the Grand Hall could bring them together. That they both appeared now to watch the examinations was practically unheard of, and would remain unheard of outside the knowledge of the other Grand Masters.

Actually, Tom didn’t know today was supposed to be any different than the other examinations. He had decided to come this year because he had not gone the several years before, and finding god-like potential in a new disciple was the goal of every expert in the _jianghu_. It was Dumbledore that, upon hearing Tom was going, had gone despite the fact.

Neither had ever fought the other, but that was to keep any power gap hidden. The best weapon a martial artist could have was secrecy—in the direst times, a secret skill unknown to their opponent could save their life. They were trapped then in a perpetual cold war; Hogwarts being neutral was the only thing that stopped the school from becoming a battleground.

Minerva McGonagall was not a Grand Master, but she was an expert of the highest degree. She was also one of Dumbledore’s disciples and for the week, held the title of Head Examiner.

Another professor administered the tests.

“Orange soul realm, excellent potential,” declared the examiner. It was a rather good result—any other school would definitely take that student—but it did not meet Hogwarts’ standards.

Soul realms were separated into colors, visualizations of power. In truth, soul realms did not have color but the crystals which soul energy was injected into reflected different shades. The testing process for soul realm strength was thus one, the basic ability to control soul energy, and two, the color reflected by the crystal.

The first part was easier. Any person who stepped foot into the _jianghu_ had to have that capability, or it was as good as a death sentence. That was why the _yamen_ and the _jianghu_ were vastly conflicting landscapes—where one had skyscrapers and cars, the other had dirt roads and largely kept to nature.

The second part was based on a person’s natural talent. Most people moved up only one color through cultivation after years of training. Thus, it could be said that some were born to be powerful martial artists, and some were not. Of course it was impossible to get anywhere without cultivation and dedicated hard work, but one’s soul realm could either be a big obstacle or a tall booster seat.

The color of soul realms were as such: red was weak, orange was average, yellow was above average, cyan was strong, blue was one-in-a-million strength, and purple was one-in-a-billion strength. To be accepted into Hogwarts, at least yellow color was necessary.

Strength of a soul realm roughly equated to capacity. The amount of soul energy a realm could contain, and thus the ‘ceiling of strength’ a person had was entirely dependent on this capacity. A Grand Master would need to end up with a purple soul realm, but the path to get that soul realm was easier from cyan to purple, rather than orange to purple.

On the other hand, potential was the speed at which the soul realm grew. The rates were as such: poor, ordinary, good, excellent, extraordinary, and god level. One’s potential never changed through cultivation—it could only be changed through rare medicines and secret rituals. Hogwarts required at least an excellent potential for admittance.

The _jianghu_ could be a merciless place. Students at Hogwarts were granted safety for the duration of their studies, which gave them enough time to fully make use of their potential. However, in order to keep Hogwarts’ resources exclusively to those who could make use of it, excellent potential was required to guarantee timely progress.

A soul realm’s color was a marker. Potential was the true roll of the die.

“Next!” the examiner shouted. “Hermione Granger!”

A young girl stepped up. Her parents nervously watched from the side—they were from the _yamen,_ but had been escorted here by a distant relative from the _jianghu_ who had heard of their daughter’s capability. The worlds were separate, but at some points they crossed. If Hermione could become a powerful martial artist, she would be well respected in both worlds and live comfortably for the rest of her life if she wished.

“Cyan soul realm, excellent potential. You pass. Go meet Head Examiner McGonagall.”

 The examinations continued.

“Ron Weasley! A _Weasley_. Your brothers are a lot of trouble, you know? Now, let’s see…yellow soul realm, extraordinary potential. Hmph, guess you pass. Your brothers had blue soul realms! Wonder if the energy was diluted by the time you were born,” the examiner muttered.

Ron wrinkled his nose and shot the man a dirty look, but a tap on his head by his mother reprimanded him.

Most people who passed had excellent potential. Around a quarter had extraordinary. There were none who had god level, which was to be expected. The number of alumni of Hogwarts who had god level amounted to less than a hundred, and Hogwarts had existed for at least four thousand years.

More names were called, and some passed, the majority didn’t. The number of students Hogwarts accepted per year averaged three hundred, and the number of applicants that came during the week was around _a hundred times_ that.

On the very last day of examinations came the person Albus was waiting for.

“Harry Potter!”

A boy no older than eleven stepped forward. He placed his hand on the crystal, and instantly it filled with a deep, rich color. Most took at least thirty seconds to completely fill it, but Harry took less than five seconds. It was because of this oddity that the examiner gave his special attention even before the color settled.

“Is…is this…”

Harry glanced up at him as the crystal was taken out of his hands. There was no curiosity in his eyes, only confidence. His crystal had filled like a vat of water had been poured into a cup, and the color was so rich that it mirrored a generous glass of brandy.

As it flowed inside the crystal, its viscosity was unlike any the examiner had ever seen before—thick like the finest honey, glistening like fresh oil.

“Purple soul realm,” the examiner breathed in disbelief. Harry coughed politely to bring his attention back to the test at hand.

“Ah, yes, very good, now let’s see, the potential is…”

At his word, Harry released his soul energy into the air to reveal his aura. It was quite similar to using magic as a sensor, and had been the first thing he’d learned since coming to this world.

Naturally, with a purple soul realm the examiner expected a very high potential! But what he saw was not so. Actually, he didn’t even know what he was seeing. Harry’s aura was an erratic gossamer cloth, one second bright and almost tangible, the next thin like a spider web. He did not know what to call it, but as it was unstable and instability was a mark of bad potential, he said, “Potential is…poor.”

What a waste! What a shame. Purple soul realm, one-in-a-billion chance, and yet this kid had poor potential? God must really hate him was what the examiner thought. Maybe he had bad karma and was carrying the curses of his past life. Absolutely horrible, like finding an unopened CD in the trash, only to find the disc was so scratched it was unusable!

“I’m sorry,” the examiner said, genuinely apologetic and pitying unlike his other dismissals, “You failed.”

“Did he really?”

The examiner started. Out of thin air, Grand Master Riddle stepped forward. The crowd instantly gave him a wide berth in respect, and the examiner actually got down on his knees to prostrate.

“G-Grand—”

“I’ll take him,” Tom said. “Be my disciple, boy.”

Not giving an option, not even having the courtesy to phrase it as a question…Grand Master Riddle was definitely different from the other experts at Hogwarts. Because they would soon have a master-disciple relationship, experts usually addressed their desired student kindly, but Riddle didn’t seem to care.

Harry, though, smiled. “My name is Harry,” he said. “Who might you be?”

Several people watching choked on their spit. One person in the crowd even fainted.

“I am your master,” Tom claimed.

“Does my master have a name?”

Tom leveled a condescending gaze at him, but Harry remained unperturbed. “I should like to know what to call you, sir,” he added.

Before Tom could answer, Albus made himself known as well.

“Now now, don’t be so rude, my boy,” he said, addressing Tom. “You’ll frighten him.”

Tom sneered. The boy hadn’t fallen to his knees under the weight of his aura, so it was unlikely anything short of death would scare him. The irony of that thought was completely lost to the one who thought it.

Turning to Harry, Albus said, “My name is Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster of Hogwarts. Would you like to attend this school? Though you did not pass the examination, I would be willing to take you on as my disciple.”

Whispers broke out among the crowd, but with a sharp look from the present examiners, they silenced. No one wanted to be eliminated before they even tested.

Harry appeared to think it over. His eyes seemed to stare off into the distance, passing through both Grand Masters into some other dimension. No, perhaps his gaze turned inward instead to look at something inside his soul…?

“I’m terribly sorry, sir,” he said after a moment, addressing Albus. “But I already have a master.”

Brimming with curiosity, Albus asked, “Oh? And who might that be, my boy?”

Harry raised his hand and pointed to Tom with all the innocence an eleven-year-old boy had, who didn’t know pointing was rude or had yet to grow out of the habit. “I don’t know his name, so I can’t tell you, but he said he was my master right before you came. I’m really sorry; you just missed it!”

It was so quiet _dust_ could be heard floating through the air.

Then, Tom smirked. “You heard the boy,” he said, eyes alight with vicious burning. “Come, brat.”

“It’s Harry,” Harry said, but he still walked forward and followed right behind Tom like a little duckling, all the way to McGonagall.

“He is mine,” Tom told her. “He’ll be sorted into Slytherin. Have the Hat finalize it.”

What could she do in the face of a Grand Master but acquiesce? Even though she was Albus’ disciple, she was also a professor at the school. Minerva hid a glance of disappointment as she placed the tall Sorting Hat on Harry’s head.

It squinted and squirmed, frowned and opened its mouth wide before closing it. The Sorting Hat _should’ve_ bellowed “BETTER BE SLYTHERIN!” without a second thought just as Tom demanded, but it didn’t.

Tom frowned at this display of disobedience. “ _Hat_ ,” he threatened.

Harry’s mischievous expression was hidden behind the Sorting Hat’s large brim.

“… _Slytherin_ ,” it finally forced out of its mouth. The reluctance was nearly palpable, like unwanted vomit had welled in its non-existent throat and had came out as slow and heavy sludge.

“ _There_ , Tom, I did it!” the Hat spat. “You have your way, just like you always do. Yes sir, sorting students—it’s definitely no business of the _Sorting Hat_!”

“So his name is Tom,” Harry exclaimed, still wearing the Hat. “Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

“Agh!” the Sorting Hat groaned. “No one can just take what’s good for them, can they? Another year, another Sorting gone wrong! But what do I know? _I’m_ just a ratty old hat, and of course an all-powerful Grand Master would know better…regardless of the fact that I was made by four of them!”

Minerva snatched back the Hat before it could say more and incur an expert’s wrath. Tom seemed to pay it no mind, instead pushing Harry toward the gates where the other accepted students went.

“Go through there. You’re a student now.”

Harry, for what its worth, obeyed—though not before bowing and saying, “Thanks, Master Tom.”

It did its job. Tom twitched, scowling like all of his good mood had been sucked out by a straw. “ _Just._ _Master_. Brat.”

Harry had nearly reached the gates. He turned around, bowing again, and then right before Tom finished his disappearing act, said, “It’s Harry, Master Tom!”

Tom really should’ve listened to what the Sorting Hat had to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What am I doing??? PROCRASTINATING FOR MY MIDTERM THAT'S WHAT!!! It's in several hours and here I am being trash.
> 
> So I have never seen a Harry Potter wuxia/xianxia fic, and if one exists please link me (probably a ton exist in Chinese, but they don't seem to be translated?) To toss in something fun and even more unusual, Harry's the MoD ;).
> 
> If you're interested in this genre, wuxiaworld.com and gravitytales.com are two big wuxia/xianxia translator sites. I highly recommend Coiling Dragon (and it's completely translated!) or Tales of Demons and Gods, which inspired this fic. I also recommend The King's Avatar, an MMORPG novel on gravitytales, and Just One Smile is Very Alluring, another MMORPG novel where the game takes place in a jianghu/wuxia-type world. It's fully translated; just google it because it's not on either of the big two. 
> 
> I also like several other romance c-novels...talk to me about it... ;w;
> 
> Also just recently made a tumblr where I'll put weird word vomit. If you can find me, shoot me an ask or a message if you like :p
> 
> P.S.: The title of this fic is tentative, so don't be surprised if you see it change. If you've got a better title, rec me pls (just like this OTP rekt my heart AGH)


	2. Chapter 2

In Harry’s opinion, the color of his soul realm wasn’t surprising in the least. Dying was apparently an excellent way to strengthen the soul (who knew?), and so he was called a genius; it was really more like an unfair advantage gained from being the Master of Death.

His potential was a lot more interesting, but Death was keeping mum on the subject so it was his own responsibility to find out that. Harry didn’t mind. Life wasn’t interesting when one held all the answers.

Though, seeing Tom Riddle again was bloody fantastic.

Voldemort was always a bit of a sore spot for him. On one hand, the Dark Lord was the root of most of his bad memories from his first life. On the other hand, he wouldn’t be who he was today if not for that experience, no matter how unsavory it was. It was genuinely surprising to find him in this universe so close to Dumbledore, and even more so that he actually looked like Tom.

It was weird. Harry had seen some strange things in his past lives, but somehow a normal Tom Riddle took one of the top places.

In the _jianghu_ , it was common knowledge that those who ascended to Grand Master became immortal. They could die, but not of natural causes—most died in battle, or ambushed by enemy sects. However, it was also common knowledge to keep this information away from the _yamen_ , so normal humans only thought martial artists had lengthened life spans.

In a world where Tom Riddle never had to make horcruxes, but obtained immortality through (apparently legitimate) means…how strange. It almost made him want to laugh. He had gone through so much trouble, so much suffering in his first life because of Tom Riddle’s stupid quest for immortality, and yet in this world, he had it not through dark magic but by pure cultivation…even before Harry was born.

Death sure knew how to give him a good time, he supposed.

Harry’s flight from the _yamen_ had been by his own power. First had come his discovery of the two separate lands, then had come his planning to go there. The Knight Bus did not exist in this world, nor did magic to ease the burden of travel. He’d managed to get to the _jianghu_ in time out of a combo of luck and perseverance.

Then there was the whole test thing to get to the exam grounds…well, no. Through a series of events, Harry followed the tugging of his soul (which had begun when he first stepped into the _jianghu_ ) straight there. On the way he’d trained up a bit, but nothing more than normal strength, stamina, and meditation practice.

He still didn’t know anything about this world. And in fact, Harry was content with finding out slowly along with the rest of his age group. There didn’t seem to be any immediate threat, surprisingly enough—he wasn’t a horcrux, didn’t have a scar; his parents were dead, but he figured if they were from the _jianghu_ it might’ve been Voldemort again in a clash of sects. That was probably his first real objective—find out what happened to his parents.

Maybe he might take revenge. Maybe not. It depended on the situation—were the villains still active? If they had long retired, Harry would leave them be. Life was too vast to focus on one pebble in the pond. He would not want his own child to seek revenge for him if it consumed their lives; life was meant to be experienced like eating a meal—slowly, at one’s own pace, savoring flavors and discovering new tastes.

…Did he mention seeing Tom again was bloody fantastic? Because it was. It really was. He was just so _easy_ —maybe it was because he was still Harry Potter, and Harry Potter was always meant to rub Tom Riddle all the wrong ways. Death had not said much at his appearance, just that he wasn’t hunting the fool and Harry should do what he wished. So, he did.

A part of him wanted to go to Dumbledore, too. He still had a soft spot for the old man, it seemed. They could have the most interesting conversations over tea and lemon drops—did he eat lemon drops in this life? He probably did. It wasn’t Dumbledore without his lemon drops—and the man had quite the trickster’s spirit to him, too. If he wanted to stir up a bit of trouble, the first place he would think of would be Dumbledore’s cauldron. The headmaster _had_ to be cooking something up in there.

Merlin—did they have a Merlin here? There was no magic, technically, so it must not be Merlin. The muggle Christian God, then? Islamic Allah? Who did he send his half-hearted prayers to, or swear in the name of? It was these small nuances of language that always tripped him up in the beginning. Well, if he slipped, he could probably BS his way through an excuse. The bigger he spun a web, the less chance they would focus on any one spot.

Unless it was Tom. But Tom was, in his head, another existence entirely—and he was his disciple now, wasn’t he? Merlin, _that_ was weird. It would take a bit to get the hang of, certainly.

Hermione, bless her heart, had passed. So had Ron, though apparently Fred and George attended as well. What was their economic situation in the _jianghu_? Status? Were they having a rough time, moderately okay, or luxurious with money to spare? The Weasleys had a soft spot in Harry’s heart, too.

Speaking of finances, Hogwarts was an incredibly expensive institution. The _jianghu_ had a separate currency to the _yamen_ ; the latter used paper money and credit while the _jianghu_ used coins, much like the Wizarding World had. They weren’t quite the galleons and sickles and knuts he remembered—conversion rates being inefficient, which the _jianghu_ was not. Ten knuts to a sickle, ten sickles to a galleon.

(The coins were called other names in other lands, but at least for Britain’s section of _jianghu_ they were galleons, sickles, and knuts.)

It put Harry in somewhat of a dilemma though. He hadn’t really thought about finances on his trip over (well, he had, but that was for food and water and shelter rather than _tuition_ ), but Hogwarts wasn’t free, and he didn’t have any money. There must be some sort of credit system in place, because the investment would be worth it for high potential students, but he hadn’t heard anything about it.

Then again, did it even apply to him? He was here not by passing the entrance exam, but by becoming Tom’s disciple. With all the looks he’d been getting, he assumed that didn’t happen very often…if at all.

What to do…

Bah, no point worrying about it now.

A transportation portal—thankfully smoother than floo, but Harry still preferred other methods of travel—teleported the students straight to Hogwarts. They were briefed about the four houses, each headed by a different expert. Severus Snape was head of Slytherin, Filius Flitwick was head of Ravenclaw, Pomona Sprout was head of Hufflepuff, and of course, Minerva McGonagall was head of Gryffindor.

None of them were Grand Masters, though they were all a step below it in terms of martial expertise and could take their own disciples.

There were four Grand Masters that counted as long-term residents of Hogwarts. Albus Dumbledore, Tom Riddle, Nicolas Flamel (and his wife, but she wasn’t a Grand Master), and Phineas Nigellus Black. Also associated but not living on grounds was Garrick Ollivander.

They weren’t told much more. That was the job of their classes. From loose tongues, Harry figured out that each house was backed by a different sect, or alliance of sects. For example, Gryffindor was backed and sponsored by Dumbledore’s Heavenly Phoenix Sect. The graduates from the respective houses could find easy slots in that sect if they gave good impressions. Thus, even though Hogwarts was a neutral institution, its existence supported the bigger sects of the _jianghu_ to remain in power through guaranteed powerful graduates.

Hermione had ended up in Ravenclaw. Ron was housed in Gryffindor.

Fortunately, in order to build good ties between the different sects, house unity was promoted (though questionable, at times). Thus, housing was not in separate areas, but combined and split by gender. The dormitories were placed in smaller castles still on Hogwarts grounds. It seemed with the lack of genuine magic, some things could not be done, even with the powerful skills of the _jianghu_. The magical expansion of a physical room was one of them.

Harry had been assigned a room number and given a room key. Even though he came as Tom’s disciple, he was no different from any other student it seemed—which was he perfectly fine with. The Dark Lord from his first life had been terribly controlling, and this time, Harry couldn’t use the excuse of being his mortal enemy to escape.

“Room 934…” Harry smiled. “Found it.”

* * *

He wasn’t good with kids.

Tom breathed a sigh, nursing a cup of tea in his hands as he had retreated back to his rooms. All of his previous disciples had been at least eighteen, Bellatrix being the youngest and hitting that age right on the dot. The point was, they could take care of themselves (somewhat) by the time he had started training them.

Harry Potter was eleven. Harry Potter was a cheeky eleven-year-old brat, but Tom knew the second he laid eyes on him that he had to have him.

It wasn’t the purple soul realm. He knew just how insignificant soul realm colors were; there were countless means to upgrade colors if one had the money and knowledge.

It was _partly_ the potential. The examiner might’ve called it poor, but he (and Albus, most likely) knew what it had _really_ been.

Someone was hiding the boy’s potential. There was a barrier blocking it from being fully discerned, but there was more than one way of telling potential. Just from looking at a person use their soul energy, Tom could get a rough estimate and what he saw was definitely not _poor_.

There was another reason he had to have Harry Potter. And that was because his very soul had howled at the sight of the boy—a wolf’s howl, back arched and muzzle pointed to the moon. Such a strong reaction of his soul was unnatural; did he fear him, did he want him, was it a cry of pain or an exclamation of jubilance? Tom did not know.

It was not a reaction shared by anyone else, he was sure. Their connection was something primal and Tom was not one to ignore such raw power. He didn’t know why, but he would find out—Harry Potter would be worth the investment. He was small and unassuming, just a little boy born with an abnormally large soul, but there was potential there beyond his hidden growth rate. Tom was reminded of himself when _he_ had first stepped foot in the _jianghu_.

Well, first he would watch. How much exactly he should put into the boy was a mystery. Bellatrix, for one, had taken to a path of cultivation like a duck to water, but not everyone was the same. Besides, Tom had yet to determine which technique suited the boy best.

* * *

“I’m Neville—Longbottom. Uh, Hufflepuff. Yellow soul realm, excellent potential.”

“I’m Ron Weasley, Gryffindor House. Yellow soul realm, extraordinary potential.”

Harry smiled. “Harry Potter, nice to meet you. I’m in Slytherin. Purple soul realm, poor potential.”

All three of them turned to the last member of room 934. The boy scoffed, eyes in a derisive squint as he glanced between Neville and Ron. Yellow soul trash. They weren’t worth his time. Harry, though, he seemed wary of—it was the poor potential that threw him for a loop. But he was Grand Master Riddle’s disciple, so there must be merit to knowing him after all…

And Harry _was_ his house mate. The emblem on his outer robe said as much.

“Draco Malfoy,” he finally announced. “Slytherin. Blue soul realm, extraordinary potential. I don’t consort with _yellows_.”

Ron stepped forward like he was going to punch him. For what it was worth, Draco stood his ground and glared back.

“Once my father hears about this, he’ll have my dorm mates changed to colors actually worth something. Don’t bother unpacking your bags, _Weasley_.” Draco’s attention slid to the side. “You can stay, Harry. Your master and my father are close associates, so it’ll be good if we get along.”

“Now you _listen here_ , Malfoy—”

Harry stepped between them before any punches could be thrown. He doubted they would have any soul energy in them (and thus wouldn’t cause serious injury), but a punch was a punch and none of them were martial artists. Hogwarts forbid unregulated skirmishes among students, and indeed most of the grounds were non-fighting areas.

“We’ll be living together for a long time,” he said, smile fixed on his face. “So let’s all get along, okay?”

Draco frowned. Ultimately, he decided Harry’s poor potential set him below him, because the next thing he said was, “Didn’t you hear what I said? _My father will_ —”

“No one cares about your _bloody_ father!” Ron shouted. “Aren’t you ashamed? Can’t stand on your own two feet without _daddy dearest_ to hold your hand?”

“At least I _have_ a father that pays attention to me. That’s what you get for overbreeding like a family of rabbits!”

“Some of us,” Harry began, “don’t have parents at all.”

Both Draco and Ron flinched back. The absence of a parental figure next to an eleven-year-old boy had made its way around—especially because he had a purple soul realm. They opened their mouths to apologize, but Harry shook his head.

“I wasn’t talking about me,” he said softly. Neville sniffed, and only then did the other two boys reel back as if they’d done some heinous crime. To Draco, even if the boy was ‘yellow trash’—and to Ron, even if he wasn’t his friend quite yet—he’d just been terribly rude. Children could be mean, but they didn’t yet have the mind for true malice.

“It’s—it’s alright,” Neville muttered. “They—my grandmother takes care of me, so…”

The late Longbottoms were killed a couple years ago. It was still recent enough to be talked about, and because their only child had been in attendance at the examinations, the topic had popped up again. When he had been trying to squeeze through the crowd to get to the proper examination platform, there had been a lot of talk, and Harry had listened.

But Neville honestly looked like he was about to burst into tears, and Ron who was the youngest son didn’t know how to deal with that. His sister had always run to his mother or Bill or Charlie or Percy, not _him_. Draco was an only child; who would run to him in tears?

Harry moved away from the two previously fighting. He pulled Neville forward, a head taller than he was, to lean on his frame as he rubbed soothing circles on his back. The boy hesitated only a moment before he pulled him into a tentative hug—of which there had been desperately few of since his parents had passed. Harry, well—Harry knew the feeling.

“S-Sorry—” Neville choked. “I just…”

“The one apologizing shouldn’t be you,” Draco, of all people, said. He shuffled his feet before stepping forward and giving a quick bow. “That was rude of me. It…was a poor representation of the Malfoy family. I apologize.”

Ron also said his apologies, though he wasn’t so formal with his.

“We’ll be living with each other from now on,” Harry’s remark doubled as a reprimand, “So we should all get along. I’d like to get to know you all, if that’s alright.”

Both Ron and Neville nodded in agreement. Draco’s assent came after a moment of hesitation—he didn’t mention switching rooms again.

Harry felt a bit proud of them. “You’re all from the _jianghu_ , right? I just came here a month ago. What’s with the weird animals? That lion had _wings_! And were those white peacocks out there? Did you see that plant? It _ate a bird_!”

Children were easy to distract.

* * *

Classes were divided into houses, so when the time for their first classes came, Harry left with Draco.

“Don’t worry, I’ll introduce you,” Draco said, puffing out his chest. “You haven’t met any of the other Slytherins yet, have you? There are many from families living in the _jianghu_ , so you can’t let them bully you! As they say, ‘if the camel once gets his nose in the tent, his body will soon follow.’ You’re Grand Master Riddle’s disciple, so a poor showing would reflect badly on him! But they won’t get away so easily either if they think they can step on you…”

Harry hummed. Knowing what he did about Tom, it was unlikely the man would come to his aid so early on. He might be his disciple now, but that was a flimsy title at the moment. To throw around the man’s name at this stage would be a mistake—he would have to survive the snake pit with his own power. Well, he also wasn’t too bothered by them; these snakes were too small to have much venom. A bite wouldn’t kill him.

At least, Draco seemed to take it as his duty to teach him. After he realized Harry knew just about nothing of the _jianghu_ , he had been both appalled and determined to rectify the problem. What he did, he thought as a representation of his father, and thus he wanted to mirror the good relationship between his father and Grand Master Riddle with Harry.

It was kind of cute, actually. Draco idolized his father; even if it sometimes came out the wrong way, his love of his parent was true and returned to him. Harry thought upon his own life here and felt a bit bittersweet. Was there a prophecy? What happened to Lily and James this time that he was left with the Dursleys?

“Blaise is quiet, but he’s clever. The Zabini family is mysterious—apparently the matriarch has gone through several husbands who all died of unknown causes. Don’t get on their bad side…but Blaise is mild mannered so it would be difficult to, I suppose. The Nott family is a little inferior to the Malfoys—their son Theo is our age. He’s a bit more distant to his peers than Blaise, but I grew up with him so he’ll like you if _I_ like you. And then there’s Pansy…”

“Draco!”

“Speaking of her…” the boy muttered, “Good morning, Pansy.”

The girl who came running up to them was only slightly taller than Harry. She flipped her thin hair over her shoulder with a flick of the wrist. “I heard you got put in a room with _yellows_ , ugh. Oh? Who’s this?”

“ _This_ ,” Draco declared, “is one of my roommates, Harry Potter.”

“The purple soul realm boy?”

“Nice to meet you,” Harry said.

“Hm.” Pansy pursed her lips. Like most of the other students, she didn’t know what to make of him. On one hand, a purple soul realm was a one-in-a-billion winning lottery ticket, but on the other hand, he had poor potential. At the same time, a Grand Master had recruited him, and the headmaster himself had come forth…

It was misleading. The importance of the soul realm’s color was less than the importance of a person’s potential. However, Harry’s potential was being hidden—not an easy thing to realize unless one was an expert. Everyone else could only follow what the examiner had said: poor potential!

“A friend of Draco is a friend of mine,” Pansy finally said. “We’re _engaged_ , you know. As his future wife, of course I’ll follow my future husband!”

Draco groaned. “Pansy…”

Conversation flowed. Harry was introduced to Blaise and Theo before the beginning of class. Right before the instructor walked in, another Slytherin he recognized arrived. Pansy enthusiastically greeted her.

“That’s Daphne Greengrass,” Draco explained under his breath. “She’s the prodigy of our age group—blue soul realm and god-level potential!”

That was surprising. Harry blinked, but didn’t speak as he allowed his roommate to continue.

“There were rumors that she was born with a cyan soul realm. The Greengrasses are rather well off though, so it was a simple matter to get enough herb grasses to change it to blue. With god-level potential, why would it be hard? They still bought more—in hopes of getting it to purple no doubt—but soul realms aren’t _that_ easy; especially if she hasn’t started practicing a cultivation technique yet, it’d be practically impossible.”

Just as he finished, Daphne turned to fix him with a withering glare. Draco stiffened beside him, but Harry knew it was meant for him with the way her eyes sought him out. This was his first time meeting her—hadn’t even heard her name before this—so why she saw him as her mortal enemy was beyond him.

Or maybe it wasn’t. If she tried to get to purple soul realm but failed, then his existence here must’ve mocked her at every turn. People—humans—could be petty like that. Harry had his own fair share of embarrassing faults and fallacies. He wasn’t above mistakes, even if he’d lived for quite some time.

Harry tilted his head. When her gaze didn’t shake, he smiled and waved.

“ _What are you doing?_ ” hissed Draco.

“Being friendly,” Harry said. “You don’t make friends by glaring at people. That’s _rude_.”

She must’ve heard, because the next second, Daphne scoffed and threw one last ice pick glare before turning away and taking a seat. Pansy chose to abandon them and take a seat beside her. Harry didn’t remember what their relationship was like in his past life, but he imagined it must’ve been good as well.

The Malfoy name was more prominent than the Greengrass’, then. He remembered that much. Draco had been the top dog in the snake cave…but in a world where martial skill outclassed blood, it seemed to be Daphne’s turn.

Well while it was interesting, as long as Daphne didn’t bother him, Harry didn’t plan on bothering her. He’d rather make more friends than foes—it was the motto he usually lived by and it had served him well. Besides, they were all children, and this was their first class here at Hogwarts. No matter how prodigious one’s natural talent appeared, it would mean nothing if hard work and dedication wasn’t put in.

“In the _jianghu_ , there exists six elements: water, wind, earth, fire, light, and darkness. Each soul has their own tendencies—you will discover what element your soul favors through the course of your first year. These elements will decide what cultivation techniques you can learn—”

Light and darkness. He wondered which one was him—or was he some other element? There had been some worlds where elementals had existed, but those powers had never been tied to the soul. If it was possible to _not_ have an element, Harry thought that’d be more likely—what could boast to be the element of death? Death was dark. Death was light. All elements of the physical realm could cause death—tornadoes, tsunamis, forest fires, earthquakes…

“I expect that none of you have began cultivating a technique yet. Once you begin, you will be a 1st rank elementary practitioner. At 10th rank, you can break through to intermediary practitioner. At 10th rank intermediary, you can break through to advanced practitioner. At 10th rank advanced, you can break through into Master tier, which has five level rankings. The fifth level is Grand Master, such as our esteemed Headmaster Albus Dumbledore!”

Some of the students had started to take notes, their quills _scritch-scratch_ ing across the table top. At first, Harry found it odd that quills were used when the _jianghu_ was connected with the modern _yamen_ , but his dorm mates had explained that it was good practice for inscriptions.

Inscriptions were this world’s version of runes. The ink that was used to write them on scrolls was special, so quills were the best option to interchange between the different inks. All families living in the _jianghu_ made their children learn how to write with quills in hopes that their children would become master inscriptionists. There was a large, high demand market for inscriptions, so anyone who was able to make their own or copy advanced level scrolls could live comfortably without a fuss.

A few children did not use quills and inkwells, which was how one could tell who was from the _yamen_.

Other students were simply listening to the instructor. This information he was giving was basic knowledge.

Now that he knew, Harry could track down how big of the gap there was between he and Tom. It didn’t surprise him too much; Tom was older and had more time to train. But how long did it take to break through the levels? How much did it take to go from 1st to 2nd rank? He didn’t know what the power curve was at all—though it must be different for everyone, since potential was a measure of potential growth rate.

And then there was this vague term, “cultivation technique.” There was no real equivalence in terms of magic, he supposed—magic cores grew passively. Skill was nurtured through practice. Magic had a wider scope of power, something more generalized and less individual to each person. Martial power was categorized and built upon specialization; that was their foundation of power rather than _concentration_.

Well, at least that was what he’d hypothesized since arriving here. His contact with Death was a perpetual feather-light touch, and the entity never gave him information pertaining to the laws of the world. As long as his existence was in this plane, then he would be confined to their rules, and half the fun was in finding out what those were.

“Before we begin discovering your elements, you must first learn what they are. Of the physical elements, wind is the fastest, earth is the slowest. Fire is second, water is third. Though, light and dark both have the potential to out-speed wind at a high expert level. The likelihood of light and darkness being your main element is low—they are mysterious arts; Grand Master Dumbledore is the only known Grand Master with light as his dominant element. All of his disciples have _some_ talent with light as well—”

The elements balanced and opposed themselves. Wind matched earth, fire matched water, light matched dark. When one was slow it also proved the most violent—though the differences could be made up with skill and individual power. Summoning wild tornadoes instead of simple wind blades, a tsunami in place of a water whip, earthquakes instead of a barrage of rocks…things of that nature.

Harry did not have any materials to take notes with. The clothes he had now were the uniforms provided by the school. He was completely penniless, but unlike most people, the fact didn’t bother him. He was well used to making something from nothing, even if he couldn’t use magic in this world. Instead of paper, he pressed the words of the instructor into his skin through touch.

The information was both new and old. Things from one world could pass over to another, and so the nature of these elements were not entirely strange. It wasn’t _what laws does this world have_ , it was _what laws does this world not have_? What could he _not_ do, rather than what he could.

When Draco noticed that his companion’s attentive ears but bare hands, he shot a questioning look at him and made a motion with his quill. Harry smiled back, close-lipped and unbothered, before shrugging. The blonde had not noticed Harry’s lack of a bag before, but now he did. Even those who hadn’t been taking notes earlier did now as the instructor continued his explanation of the elements.

Harry was the only one who wasn’t writing. Beneath the desk he scribbled small phrases and symbols onto his arm using a finger, but hidden by his position, no one saw—it looked as if he were merely listening, like one would do at an orchestral performance.

Of course, the instructor noticed. He shot him a dirty look, but Harry’s serene expression was as constant as the planet’s rotation. He knew, of course, what the man was probably thinking—arrogant purple soul realm, not taking notes simply because Grand Master Riddle had chosen him as his disciple! Even Daphne Greengrass was acting like a diligent student; compared to her, of course Harry looked like a no-good troublemaker!

Maybe once he might’ve balked at the glare, or even glared right back. But now there was simply no need—immune, he was so immune that chaos sprung up around him to compensate for the void of his presence. If he enjoyed it, well…even if he could’ve lied, Harry would’ve answer that question with silence instead.

Grand Masters rarely chose disciples, even if they came masked to each annual examination. Daphne Greengrass, with her god-level potential, was expected to draw attention—but the attention had gone to Harry instead, and the remaining Nicolas Flamel had not chosen her; he was too occupied with interrogating his old friend Albus!

If he knew, Harry would’ve supposed he _did_ indirectly steal something from her…but Harry was quite oblivious to it all, and uncaring on top of that. Daphne held onto her grudge like her world had frosted over into a never-ending winter. The expectations placed on her by her parents and relatives was a heavy burden she had felt she could hold—no, even lift and waltz across a ballroom with—but then Harry Potter had come along and given her a taste of failure before she even saw his face.

There was still a chance that she would catch the eye of an expert and be taken in as a disciple. It was quite a high chance, as well—but that she had not been chosen by a Grand Master made the other experts wary, and so they hesitated and decided to wait rather than pick her off the fruit tree now.

 _Master_ , Death whispered.

_“Hm?”_

_There may be some…complications in the future._

Harry blinked. _“But not now?”_ he asked within the shared privacy of his mind. It was rare that the being would give him prior warning to anything.

Death’s reply came slow. _We are unsure._

_“…Alright then. What will these ‘complications’ be?”_

_This matter…_

_“Can’t say?”_

Death’s presence did not leave, which was the only indication that the conversation was not yet over. Harry waited patiently, completely disregarding the lesson now.

 _There has been interference in the system_ , Death finally replied. _But there has been no evidence left behind. It disturbs us that something has managed to slip past our attention. Master, as you are still in the early stages of your rebirth, your astral body is vulnerable right now—please take care not to phase._

 _“I normally don’t, anyway.”_ Using his ‘astral body’—the true form of the Master of Death, which carried all the abilities and skills from his previous lives—was cheating. Harry only ever phased into it if there was a job he needed to do. It was like summoning Death to come walk the mortal plane: simply not done.

 _No, Master, but you absolutely_ must not _now. If there is a matter, we would much prefer you break several universal rules by summoning us rather than phasing. We rather anger a god than risk your existence._

_“…Got it. No phasing. Tell me if you find out what’s wrong?”_

Death paused again. There was a longer gap of silence before they finally said, _Certainly._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> expect time skips because nothing important will happen as Harry gets up to speed. You'll know when shit goes down, I guarantee it :P
> 
> If you've got any questions, I'll try to answer them unless they'll pop up later. (Also I might make sure they're answered later if I wasn't aware of them before; sometimes I miss things so)


	3. Chapter 3

Two years passed by.

Hogwarts was not exactly the same Hogwarts he knew, but the castle still had enough familiarities that Harry was comfortable. The more he learned about the world, the better he got—it was by this time, two years after he ‘failed’ the examinations, that Harry felt settled enough to take the next step.

Tom had not visited him once. He had not seen hide nor hair of the Grand Master—not that it really bothered him any; Harry kind of expected this—and by this time, most of the interest in him had faded. Harry Potter was, aside from his soul realm, completely ordinary and as implied by his potential, a poor student.

None of the professors ever liked him because he never took notes. His serene expression in the face of everyone else’s struggles made him appear as if he didn’t take his classes seriously. On top of that, not only did he not begin cultivating a technique yet—which left him off the rankings—but he also had not discovered his element yet. In terms of his age group, Harry was far behind. Purple soul realm? In the eyes of his fellow classmates, it didn’t mean much!

There was a very small select group of people who still bothered to talk to him. It included his dorm mates—who, in the face of Harry’s bullying, grew as thick as thieves to ‘protect’ him—as well as Hermione Granger, who found camaraderie with him as her zealousness alienated her from her peers. Harry’s completely indifferent attitude served to balance her out in some respects; she found his company could be as relaxing as it could be frustrating.

Everyone thought Harry was a failure. “Dead Wall” they called him; “Dead Wall” Harry Potter, who couldn’t do anything and never even tried to. How pitiful that Grand Master Riddle had a disciple like him. The only proof that Harry still had some sort of connection here was that he was still enrolled; otherwise, after spectacularly failing the examinations, why else could he be here?

Harry didn’t care. He continued to attend his classes, smiled when he met eyes with someone, spoke when he was spoken to. If he knew about his nickname, he certainly didn’t show it. Even Daphne found him so pitiful that she abandoned her grudge and walked right past; it had been a fluke. Everything about Harry Potter had been a fluke. She didn’t need to be concerned about him anymore; he was so beneath her that her eyes slid by him like he was a rock—not worth her time, just part of the background.

“I’m telling you, mate, you’re taking way too many classes!”

Ron groaned from his spot on the plush sofa. Harry laughed, walking in empty-handed as always. He was away from the dorm the most out of all of them just from the sheer amount of classes he had on his schedule.

“This is a school. There’s no such thing as too many classes,” he replied. “I’m sure Hermione would agree with me.”

“The _difference_ is that _she_ takes notes,” Ron pointed out. When Draco emerged from his room, the two casually bumped fists in greeting. “I’ve never seen you use a quill, never mind carry a bag.”

“Bags are barbaric!” Draco sniffed haughtily.

“Not everyone can afford an interdimensional ring!”

“Hmph. I won’t have my roommates lacking such basic necessities. If you needed one, why not say so?”

Harry laughed again as he watched their back and forth. Ron turned his head away and mumbled something under his breath, and Draco took that as his cue to grab a drink from the cooler.

“Welcome back, by the way,” Draco continued, this time to Harry. He handed him a cold bottle of water. “What class was it today? Darkness?”

“Light,” Harry corrected. Because he hadn’t discovered his main element yet, he was expected to take all rudimentary elemental courses. They were basically hour-long lecture classes. Both Ron and Neville had groaned when they first found that out, but Harry, like usual, had only smiled. “We got out a bit early. I think I saw Neville out in the fields during his earth class.”

Ron lit up. “When he’s finished, let’s all go to the Great Hall and get something to eat! I’m dying of hunger here!”

“You’d think you were a homeless beggar with how often you say that,” drawled Draco.

“I’m growing and I have an appetite. Hermione says cultivating consumes calories, so it’s only natural I eat more! Problem, Malfoy?”

“You’d consume calories if you actually bothered to cultivate. Still stuck at 1st rank?”

“Only along with _ninety percent of our age group_.”

Draco smirked. “Hm. Better catch up then, weasel.”

Harry shook his head at the two. Draco had just broken through to 2nd rank three days ago, and he took any opportunity to brag about it. No one _actually minded_ —they had even thrown a bit of a celebration when it happened—but seventy-two hours of bragging made one wonder how many more times he could bring it up.

“Home is nice,” Harry said, plopping onto the sofa beside Ron. He stretched out much like a cat before curling in on himself again. Though the sofa was small, he was even smaller, and so there was enough space for another person at the other end.

“Shoes off!” Draco squawked. “Don’t be a barbarian!”

Harry hummed. “Yes, mother,” he said, and then compliantly stuck out his feet for Draco to pull off his shoes one by one. They were tossed haphazardly toward the door before the blonde Slytherin shoved his legs over to take a seat. This was the scene that Neville walked into—Ron sprawled out like a couch potato at one end, Draco sitting upright with his legs crossed one over the other at the other end, and little Harry curled in a ball laying down between them.

If he was any bigger, then his head would be in Ron’s lap and his feet would be in Draco’s, but he was just small enough to fit perfectly in the leftover space.

The first thing Neville said was, “I didn’t know I adopted three cats.”

“ _Finally_! Your earth class takes an _eternity_! Let’s go eat now—”

“You should’ve been born a pig, Weasley.”

“Shove off, corn head!”

Harry yawned. “Let’s go eat before Ron accidentally becomes a cannibal.”

They were out the door in a minute.

* * *

On top of the elemental classes Harry was required to take, he also picked up a few others as was normal for a second year. Second year, the students were just discovering their cultivation paths and beginning on training their elements—it was good to test and see what else they might have talent or interest for.

It was, of course, mostly theory. Some fields were too dangerous for children to practice without some form of cultivation. That was also why a physical training class was required for all lower years. The body was as important as the soul when it came to martial power.

Harry picked up rudimentary inscriptions as well as agriculture, refining, simple magical beasts, art, and specialized histories. Basically, anything that he could get his hands on, he would take. Alchemy was unfortunately later (much like potion making, things could go wrong and fast), but he was planning on taking that, too. These classes weren’t for grades or supplementary lessons or anything like that; it was purely for knowledge.

Hermione had at first wanted to follow his plan, but when she saw how ambitious it was if she wanted to keep up her grades, she controlled herself and only took half as much. She was a diligent note-taker and put aside time after class to review the notes she took. Harry, on the other hand, never took any notes (that they could see, anyway), which meant all he did was attend.

Of course, attendance wasn’t anything to shirk at, either. The instructors may all think he was a no good troublemaker, but they had to admit that his attendance couldn’t be faulted. Harry never missed a single class, be they special classes or basic lessons that all students were required to take. Sometimes he sat in the back, sometimes he sat in the middle, sometimes even in the front—but he was always there, no matter what.

Homework was another matter. Harry _never_ turned in homework. For every class he attended, every single paper and assignment was left untouched. At first, all the instructors were expecting him to fail and get kicked out of Hogwarts that way…until he took his first quiz. All quizzes, tests, and exams came back with a perfect score. They couldn’t even catch him cheating, because he wasn’t!

The result was Harry cruising by with at least an average grade in everything. They docked points on participation, classwork, _anything_ , but when his tests came back, it was clear to everyone that Harry was not going to get expelled for his grades.

“Harry!” Hermione saw him first. When she noticed the rest of the boys she waved them over, too.

Ron wasted no time in stuffing his face at the table.

“Did you understand the lesson today?” was the first thing Hermione asked. “For water. I understood the concept, but then when she gave us that assignment it didn’t connect at _all_!”

Hermione’s second element was water—though it was far below her primary element, wind. She didn’t want to give up on it though, so she signed up for the rudimentary water class that Harry would be attending. After rudimentary came basic classes, which was a more hands-on experience aside from lectures. Only those who could use the element could attend basic courses.

That meant Harry attended none of them.

“You could ask _me_ ,” Draco sniffed. He had dual primary elements water and darkness—certainly impressive enough to earn considering looks from Hogwarts’ experts.

Hermione wrinkled her nose. “Promise you won’t make any _yamen_ comments?”

“No promises.”

“Then Harry it is,” she declared. While they were all on friendly terms, some bonds were more fragile than others. Hermione and Draco tended to butt heads because of their different backgrounds, and though they could be cordial at lunch, it could all go to hell by the time dinner came around.

Harry shrugged. “Just do the assignment.”

“But you _never_ do the assignments.”

“So?”

“If you can understand without doing them, why can’t I?”

 _Ah,_ Harry thought. A frustrated Hermione was a petulant one. “You probably could, but the assignment makes it easier. Think theory last, purpose first.”

Draco made his way into the conversation again. “Is this the river watching assignment?”

“Yep.”

Hermione still looked disgruntled. Neville casually bumped her shoulder and murmured, “It’ll be like the wind blowing assignment—you liked that one, didn’t you?”

“That was _easy_ ,” Hermione said, nibbling on a piece of bread. “I understood that one before the instructor even explained it. But this time I don’t get it _at all_!”

Neville tried again to comfort her. “It’s not your primary element, so you shouldn’t worry about it. Happens with everyone’s secondaries. Er, well, not that I know, but that’s what I heard…”

“Let’s all have a picnic next to the river tomorrow,” Harry offered. “We’ll be moral support as you do your assignment.”

“ _Our_.”

“Our,” he agreed. “…But you know I’m not going to do it, right?”

“ _Fine_.”

* * *

Severus Snape didn’t understand why Harry Potter _bothered_ him so much.

Well, no. In all honesty, he did. Completely. But the reasons didn’t make sense, so he didn’t like to think about them. Sensible things pleased him—the bubbling of a cauldron, the harmony of ingredients, the colors of potions and their scents wafting up to his nose. Those made sense. He could explain those, and everyone would agree with him because it was factual information. _Proven_ information. Things that had evidence past his own personal experiences.

But he couldn’t prove Harry Potter’s existence.

Severus was an expert of advanced 10th rank, close to his break through into Master tier. However, cultivation wasn’t nearly so easy as it sounded, and the terror that quaked in his heart didn’t help matters. He supposed it only served him right, some divine justice sent down to punish him for his misdeeds of the past.

Harry Potter. Harry _Potter_. He had Lily’s eyes, James’ face, and nothing else.

Well, that was also false, Severus supposed. When he first saw the boy, hadn’t he been reminded of himself? Harry Potter was a sailor in a storm. Calm and deliberate, he navigated the world not with the curiosity of a child but with the consideration of an adult. Severus saw his own hands when he looked at the boy; callused from where he held the rough stirring stick, thin knife scars from where he had nicked himself in the past.

Harry Potter was the eye of the _jianghu_ hurricane, he was sure.

“Enter,” Tom said at the first knock. Severus inwardly started—had he been expected? _Was this Albus’ game, or Marvolo’s?_ —but showed nothing as he obeyed and entered.

Seeing the man sitting there in an arm chair screwed rivets of emotions into his head. The pain he felt was not all of the heart; it was of the mind, because he knew this man and he was no longer allowed to. It was Hogwarts that kept him safe, Hogwarts that made him rash and foolhardy to instigate this meeting. He shouldn’t be here.

“Master,” Severus breathed. He bowed his head and lowered his eyes on instinct. These motions were ingrained into his very being—his lips moved out of habit, his neck bent like a thin branch that had been blown by the wind. It was natural to submit to this man.

But he was no longer allowed to.

Tom’s gaze was not warm, unlike the boiling temperature of the room. Severus swallowed and knew it was no longer his place to call him by that title. He righted himself under that stare, looked forward and hid his fear. Was he welcome anymore by this god-like man? Would he be crucified where he stood for his impudence? Dumbledore could not protect him, not here in Grand Master Riddle’s personal room.

“Severus,” Tom finally acknowledged. “Old friend, are you feeling nostalgic?”

Severus did not reply.

“Come. Sit. Have some tea,” Tom offered. But Severus knew him, or at least he did long ago, and so he knew it was more of a demand than whatever soft guise his once master masked it with.

The chair was soft and comfortable but it still felt like a million needles pierced his body when he sat down. It was like sitting on icicles in the caldera of a volcano, trapped not by tangible shackles but a paralyzing fear. In much the same way, the tea was perfectly bitter to his tastes but it went down like drinking poison. Severus had never been so tense in his entire life.

It was only when Tom said no more that he realized the man’s attention was directed somewhere else.

Instead of calling attention to himself, Severus followed the man’s gaze to a large frameless mirror. It reflected nothing; the images being shown was not of the room they sat in. A scrying window made from advanced water arts—naturally, Grand Master Riddle would have something like that. If he had talent in the water element then he would have made it, and if he didn’t then he very well could’ve bought it like a trinket at a street stall.

Though, scrying windows were much more than _trinkets_. Especially one so large. Severus blinked and focused on what was being shown.

He recognized his godson, Draco Malfoy, first. And then he saw the children Draco associated with—Ronald Weasley, Neville Longbottom, Hermione Granger, and…Harry Potter. Of course, of course. That was why he was here, wasn’t he? Because so long as Harry Potter was kept as Grand Master Riddle’s disciple, then he would be at Hogwarts to stay. If Harry Potter was at Hogwarts, Severus’ night terrors would never vanish. He would be haunted, tormented for years on end—

Lily. James. Potter. _If only_.

“Will you expel him?” Severus asked.

He didn’t know what type of answer he was expecting, but it was certainly not _laughter_. Tom leaned back his head and laughed long and hard, like a joke so horrid it was hysterical had been told.

“I thought of it once or twice,” Tom said when his laughter ceased. “Hogwarts is not enough for him. Imagine what he could accomplish if he was locked away in my manor? Ah, but it is my affection for this place that stayed my hand. I wish he will grow to love it as much as I do.”

… _Pardon me, but have you gone insane_ didn’t slip past Severus’ lips, but it was a close thing.

“Or did you mean to expel him as my disciple?”

The question was said with a honey-coated dagger. Severus swallowed and carefully avoided giving a direct answer.

Tom appeared amused. “Severus, my slippery friend, you haven’t changed in the slightest. Tell me, are you here because Albus sent you?”

“…The Headmaster did not send me.”

“Oh? So you haven’t come with an ulterior motive? To wrestle this treasure from my hands and give it to your liege?”

Severus struggled. “I beg your pardon, Marvolo, but I don’t follow.”

“You refuse to say what is on your mind,” Tom drawled. The tea in his cup stirred as the Grand Master considered it. “One of your less admirable traits, I suppose. Well, that _is_ how you won my favor, so perhaps I can’t say.”

 _It was also how I lost it_. Severus despaired before he spoke again. “Marvolo, are you saying that the boy is…”

“The winning lottery ticket,” Tom confirmed. “Do you see him? Have you watched him? He’s amazing, is he not? My little sapling, with enough patience to move mountains! And luck! It’s as if the world is enamored with him and seeks to cater to his every whim. If it were not so baffling, I dare say even _I_ would be jealous.” He chuckled again, and the sound echoed in Severus’ mind like the _shink_ of a knife being sharpened.

He came here to inquire about the boy’s fate. What he heard instead was his old master singing praise after praise of him! The world was too strange—no, _Harry Potter_ was too strange. Severus felt slightly nauseous.

“His instinct is razor sharp,” Tom continued. “I don’t even have to _do_ anything—he feels the world as if there’s no difference between it and the clothes on his back. It’s _absurd_. And he’s either humbler than an ant or as oblivious as dust because he seems to have _no idea_ what he’s doing! I would steal his blood if it were to work for me. Surely someone has injected a luck potion into his veins at one point or another…”

Tom sounded like he was _bragging_. Grand Master Riddle, _bragging_. The world was going to end; Severus just knew it.

Surely if Harry Potter caught his attention so completely, Tom would’ve done some research? At the very least, a background check? Severus took a breath and asked. “Do you know his origins?”

“From the _yamen_ ,” Tom said in the same tone. “He ran away from home to get to the _jianghu_. I have my suspicions why…but you ask too much.”

“No,” Severus said quickly, “He is yours. Albus concedes the point, I’m sure—”

“Albus never concedes anything. You understand, don’t you, Severus?”

He shuddered at the dark twist Tom’s voice had taken. “I do. My interest is personal—the boy reminds me of…” _Lily. James. Potter, and yet not._

“It doesn’t matter,” Tom said.

“Even if the boy proves a threat to _yourself_ , Marvolo?”

For a second, Severus thought he hit something. He waits for the metaphorical pin to drop, but nothing comes. Once upon a time, maybe his master would’ve demanded he leave—given him extra drills, ordered his isolation for his insolence. His master had been quick to rile with an even quicker temper, flames fanning at the briefest spark. But Tom was not the same, Lord Voldemort was no more, and—

Tom laughed. “My sapling, a threat to me? So you’ve finally learned how to joke, old friend. If Harry Potter is a threat to me, then _I_ am a threat to myself. You simply wouldn’t understand.”

“The Greengrass girl,” Severus hurried to change the subject, “Is she not a ‘ticket’ as well?”

“Oh, her.” Tom finally took another sip of tea, and it looked like dismissal. “I suppose. Had she continued to antagonize my sapling, I wouldn’t have cared—but it appears she’s had a change of heart, so I suppose I should pick her up soon.”

Severus blanched. The idea that Tom had anything near an _emotional attachment_ to the boy was too earthshaking to think about.

“You know I dislike dissension in my ranks,” the Grand Master continued. “Albus will not take her because she has no talent in light. Flamel has gratuitously decided to keep out of our games—this round, at least. Black has not taken a disciple in _centuries_ , and Ollivander is haply absent. I _supposed_ I could take her—but then my sapling sprouted, and I didn’t want to take chances that the flower was actually a weed.”

“So—”

“Another expert could’ve taken her. I don’t care. But my sapling has given them quite the scare so they all hang in the shadows, too scared to stake a claim. The ‘ _Everlasting Blizzard’_ technique is fairly potent; if I invest a few decades she could be a little inferior to Bellatrix.”

“With her talent, I assumed it would be more…?”

“Talent isn’t everything,” Tom said. “Her potential is a bit of a crutch. The Greengrass family is too greedy—they eat with their eyes before their meal has even been cooked. That’s why my sapling is a hundred times more interesting.”

It all came back around to Harry Potter. Severus watched the moving image in the scrying window—they were on a picnic of some sort, just children being children. No matter how he stared or from what angle he approached, he couldn’t see what was so amazing about the boy…but then his eyes landed on Draco. Draco, his spoiled little godson who was slowly growing up.

If it was from these eyes that Tom saw the boy, then Severus theorized he might understand.

“You’re wrong.”

“…I beg your pardon, Marvolo?”

Tom’s lips curled into a smirk. “Don’t be misled. Sapling he may be, but his future is a tree. Trees provide shade from the sun, wood for a fire, a home for animals that will seek him out. Trees are very useful things, and they don’t need to love to be of use to be made use of. As long as he’s able to grow without anyone cutting him down, I’ll naturally profit by association. _That_ , Severus, is how rich of a resource he is.”

* * *

Harry thought he felt something watching him.

It wasn’t a particularly new feeling, but it usually only happened during class time. That his watcher had decided to spectate him outside of class gave him mixed feelings—he _thought_ he knew who it was, but in this world he was neither strong enough or knowledgeable enough to say for sure.

The only reason he knew something was watching him at all was because of his gut. Instinct told him something was watching him, but his senses—immature as they were—never caught a wisp of anything.

But it was disturbing. He didn’t want to be watched all hours of the day; a respect for privacy would’ve been welcome. Well, it wasn’t like he was doing anything illegal (yet), but it was the idea behind it that meant the most. That decided, Harry turned his head to where his gut told him he was being watched from—a random spot in the sky, empty of course—and pointedly waved his hand in greeting.

His friends noticed. Of course they did.

“…Harry? What are you doing?”

“Hmm? Oh, I thought I saw a little bird in the sky.”

Bemused, they all tried to follow his line of sight but came up with nothing.

“…Mate, you’re weird.”

“ _Hey_ , I happen to like birds, alright?”

“Cross your fingers to reveal as a wind element, then.”

* * *

Severus almost spat out his tea.

Tom had a different reaction—he grinned, a smile full of teeth and double-edged satisfaction—before saying, “See? He makes anyone else pale in comparison!”

* * *

“Severus—did you just say Tom has not instructed him for the past two years?”

He shouldn’t have come here. He shouldn’t have gone to Grand Master Riddle’s room either, but it was an even worse decision to come see Albus _right after_. True, he had been called, but he could’ve refused—said he had a headache, papers to grade, a potion cooking on the stove! _Something_. Anything.

Albus’ previously calm demeanor had melted like a popsicle in a forge. Why was that so important, that Tom had not taken his disciple’s education by the reigns? If anything, Severus thought Albus would be _pleased_ , but he wasn’t, definitely wasn’t. In fact, the old headmaster looked like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over his head.

“That was what he implied,” he said. “But I do not think it was out of a lack of interest—” _the opposite, actually_ , “—he has been…observant.”

“Interested.”

“Like a cat at a mouse hole.”

“I believe you,” Albus said quietly. “Severus, my boy…”

In front of Grand Master Riddle, Severus was nothing. In front of Grand Master _Dumbledore_ , however, then he at least had the voice to speak the words he wouldn’t otherwise say. “Why is it so important that he hasn’t been instructed?”

There was a pause.

“I thought,” Albus began, “No, I _assumed_ that Tom was telling him to do it. That Tom was making a gamble…however, it appears that he never gambled in the first place, and has reaped all the rewards of the winning bet.”

“Come again?”

“Mr. Potter has not revealed his element yet, yes?”

Severus frowned at the segue. “He has not. It is not unorthodox, but certainly sets him at the lowest group of students. Previous students who have failed to reveal all have been expelled soon enough.”

“Not all,” the headmaster corrected. “Most.”

“…An important distinction to make?”

“Very much so. You know well that one who has discovered their element will quickly find a cultivation technique. Training elemental power alongside _martial_ power eases the burden on the body significantly, and there are many more advantages to practicing both at the same time. But you must also know, my boy, that cultivating a technique has some disadvantages as well.”

“Trivial disadvantages compared with the returns,” Severus waved off. He knew all this. “The faster one cultivates, the better. Let the soul grow with the body. One is nothing without the other. What is your point, Albus?”

The Grand Master shook his head and plowed on. “A cultivation technique must be compatible with your elements. Once a practitioner begins cultivating, it is very, very difficult—say, impossible—to nurture the other elements. If the technique is only compatible with the primary element, then raising the secondary element is like pulling teeth from a dragon—”

If Albus wanted to discuss theory, then Severus would humor him. “It matters little. Few have secondary elements, fewer have double primary elements. Even at Hogwarts, the number of students that have a second element is half, and the number of students with more than two is at most a quarter of them. It is impossible to naturally raise an incompatible element to secondary level, so the ‘sacrifice,’ if you insist on it being one, is minor.”

“Not impossible. _Improbable_.”

“Fine,” Severus snapped. “The chances are infinitesimally small— _though they exist_ —so the loss of opportunity is trivial compared to the gains from cultivating a technique. On top of that, cultivation techniques can add additional elemental power depending on which we are discussing, so losing an innate element is not a big loss in the grand scheme of things.”

“The chances are specifically one percent for each level,” Albus said.

That…wasn’t information Severus had ever heard before, and he was almost Master tier. If _he_ hadn’t heard it before—and he lived in a school—then what were the chances of others knowing about it?

“I beg your pardon?”

“For an element to move from incompatible to secondary, the chance is approximately one percent. Nicolas would like to argue it is, in fact, _less_ , but one percent is the accepted theory.”

Accepted theory? By _who_?

“From secondary to primary, it is also one percent,” continued the Grand Master. “This is for each element. If we assume a person has one innate primary element, then it is a 1 x 10-8 percent chance for that person to move all incompatible elements to secondary. To move all secondary elements to primary, it becomes a 1 x 10-18 percent chance. You are correct—those are relatively infinitesimally small odds for a growing child. It would be a terrible sacrifice to postpone a child’s development and bet on those odds.

“Do you know, Severus, that Mr. Potter did not reveal an element because he asked to be excluded from the test?”

The element test was a private affair. Of course he didn’t know, and of course Albus _did_. Such an unorthodox request would be alerted to the headmaster first, and he had allowed it.

Severus took a deep breath. “Albus. You have a point. I have not heard it yet.”

He wasn’t smiling. “I could only sense that Mr. Potter had a primary in light on the day of the examination. Tom was always a brilliant student—he would have the ability to tell more, I believe...at any point in time that he wishes. To track his progress, perhaps?”

 _The winning lottery ticket_. Severus thought he would rather like a drink, right now.

“It was a mistake to let him go.”

Albus slowly shook his head. “There will be no battles on Hogwarts grounds.”

“How much will it matter?”

Instead of answering—which was an incriminating answer by itself, Severus thought bitterly—Albus turned to look at the problem with another eye. “I believe there may be some good out of this. Fate works in mysterious ways, my boy—and we, powerful we may be, are still mortal and incapable of understanding Her. Why were you interested in Harry Potter? Why was I privy to information the rest of the world has been concealed from? Why, on that day, did Tom decide to step forward? Ah…we may never know, dear boy. We may never know…and yet…”

“I saw her,” _and him_ , “in his eyes,” _in his face_ , “but Lily and James never had a child.” _I would know._ Severus, of all people, _would know_.

Albus sighed. He was beginning to hate that sound.

“Tell me, my boy, what do you know about prophecies?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear lord, I just realized that MoD!Harry makes a terrible xianxia MC...oh well he'll grow into it, or push someone else into the role. The world will never knooooooowwwww.
> 
> There's gotta be some way to make this poor boy care. Maybe one of these babies are going to get kidnapped, idk.
> 
> Harry totally didn't get into Slytherin because of his ambition. He got in for his cunning (and resourcefulness). Ambition? Currently at 0 points but we'll fix that eventually. Maybe.
> 
> Also if my math is wrong please correct me, like that would be super embarrassing but I suck at statistics woops :|


	4. Chapter 4

Daphne Greengrass had become Grand Master Riddle’s next disciple.

It was ludicrous. _Two_ disciples from the _same year_? Even if Daphne and Harry had been chosen by different Grand Masters, the school still would’ve been in an uproar. But no, to make matters worse, they were chosen by the same Grand Master. Rumors flounced around from the lowest ranking students to the highest.

They were saying…things; things that didn’t disturb Harry, but certainly disturbed his friends. Draco wanted to say something, but for once in his life, he couldn’t. The relationship between his father and Grand Master Riddle was very good, so if he said anything that could be construed against Riddle, it would be—as Draco explained to Ron in simplest terms— _very, very bad_.

On the other hand, Hermione was very vocal, though she didn’t have half the audience Draco would’ve had. “It’s obvious!” she shouted at lunch one day. “You’re still here, aren’t you? Isn’t that proof enough that you’re just as good as _she_ is? Everyone’s gone mad!”

She was biased, of course. Hermione hated Daphne’s guts. During her primary education in the _yamen_ , Hermione was used to being top of her class, and she tried to continue the trend at Hogwarts. Sometimes she struggled—this was all new to someone not born in the environment—but she was always within the top five when test results came out. Cultivation was another matter, but she was somewhere in the middle there so certainly not bottom tier.

Daphne beat her at everything. Tests, cultivation…Hermione was convinced; _everything_. Since her closest friends were boys, it was hard to say—and certainly did go unsaid—but Harry had been born a woman a few times, and he had his fair share of female friends since his first life. It was the usual insecurities that dragged Hermione down so, and though he _wished_ he could say something, chances were that she wouldn’t listen to him.

She was a late bloomer—or perhaps Daphne was the early one: more curvaceous, more refined, better built and easier on the eyes. It was only natural that Daphne seemed all these things—the Greengrasses were a prestigious family in the _jianghu_ —but to Hermione, that kind of grace was unusual and made the Ice Queen seem more like a fairy than a thirteen-year-old girl. Out of all the girls in their age group, Daphne was the undisputed number one beauty.

Harry _wanted_ to say it didn’t matter. He wanted to ask her, “So what if she’s pretty?” because they were only thirteen and it really _didn’t matter_. Daphne’s appearance came from medicines and make up and painstaking effort—he would know, he lived with _Draco_ and half the boy’s morning was spent in front of a mirror. She would probably be fair without it, truth be told, but Hermione wasn’t ugly just because Daphne was pretty.

He wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake the madness out of her, but just like when _his_ Hermione had been head over heels for one Gilderoy Lockhart, he bet it would do as much good as taping a broken wand together. Maybe even less.

Setting Hermione versus Daphne aside (of which only existed in Hermione’s mind, he was sure; the eldest Greengrass daughter had set herself on a pedestal, ruthlessly kicking down anyone who tried to climb up beside her), Harry wasn’t quite sure what to make of Tom’s move.

He had chosen her, that was fact. That he did was probably proof of Daphne’s own talent—she surely must be extraordinary, with that god-level potential, so much so that a Grand Master would pluck her up. He supposed this meant they would be interacting more in the future. Disciples under the same master had their own bond—even if they joined different sects, which was unlikely—they would always be comrades.

On a tangent, Harry wasn’t very fond of being chained down. His desire for freedom had come with him from his first life. The more he was suppressed, the harder he would buck and the more vicious his escape plans would be. He admitted that it was one of his weaknesses—it’d tripped him up before, how quickly his temper could be incited—and yet he could never find it in himself to reject it.

How could he lie down like a dog for a master? How could he take being tugged this way and that by a master puppeteer’s threaded strings? He couldn’t. Every fiber of his being wanted to split off into fire breathing dragons, take to the sky and roast whatever dared to take away his freedom.

…Then there was Tom, who was his master, who he was disciple to, who he had not seen for two years.

Grand Master Riddle, he learned, was the head of the Feathered Serpent Sect, rival to Dumbledore’s Heavenly Phoenix Sect. His cultural classes had _mentioned_ a Voldemort, leader of a dark sect called the Death Eaters, but there had been no connection explicitly stated with Tom Riddle and his Feathered Serpent Sect. In fact, all Harry had to tie those two names together was his first life—Tom Marvolo Riddle, _I am Lord Voldemort_.

Voldemort was dead. His forehead was unblemished. He was left with the Dursleys. No one knew who he was. And yet, Tom Riddle was alive, had come to him, had picked _him_ that first day instead of Daphne Greengrass.

If it had been anyone other than Tom Riddle, Harry would’ve chalked it all up to coincidence…but between he and Tom, coincidence didn’t exist. There was destiny, there was fate, there was rhyme and reason and _prophecy_.

Harry honestly forgot what the prophecy said, only something along the lines that they were fated to kill each other. Maybe. Well the actual text had been irrelevant during his first life, seeing as how Dumbledore had planned everything out so all he had to do was follow orders. Did it exist in this life at all? Was it phrased differently? 

He kept asking these questions and never got an answer. It felt important—if Tom was in his life but he _wasn’t_ the man’s horcrux, what kept them bound? An intangible destiny, or something more? And Neville, Neville didn’t seem connected this time, so _why_ —why were Lily and James gone, never mind Sirius, never mind Remus, never mind _Peter Pettigrew_.

…He couldn’t meditate like this. Harry snorted softly and tried to calm his thoughts.

While it was true he took more classes than the average student in his group, most of the time he was away was actually spent meditating. He had discovered that, much like magic, this world’s powers were connected to the environment. They were all part of a system, a cycle, an interconnected webbing that teased his senses hauntingly.

Wind. Water. Fire. Earth. Light. Darkness. In his mind’s eye, Harry could see them—all around him, floating particles of invisible energy were clustered and spread like clouds of shining dust. They seemed to exist in another dimension, but didn’t all the same. He felt them in different concentrations and often tried to call out to them—they were new and old; reincarnated with changed forms and similar essences.

For Harry, this state of mind was easy to fall into. It was not exactly the same as phasing into his astral body, but it held much the same concept—to look without the eyes, to feel without the hands, to breathe without the mouth. Once he figured out what he was doing, it began to take a strain on his body. Communion with the elements was a tricky thing—his body was not yet suited for it, and much like how one could not go hours on end without blinking, straining his mind’s eye to visualize these elements was exhausting.

To be honest, he didn’t _exactly know_ what he was doing. It felt right, but whether or not this world had a specific name for it, or even a better process…he didn’t know. He called on his past experiences that told him power did not originate with the self; power originated from the world around him. He, its user, took it into his bosom and heart and soul, let it circulate through his body by his blood stream, and wielded it under the promise that he would give it back.

The greater powers had contracts. Death, for example, was the ferryman—that was their role. They could not use their seemingly infinite powers for anything else. They would exist as long as the world would exist, spreading out through multiple dimensions and universes while still being only _one_. It was a lot to understand, and Harry himself only took it at face value since it gave him a headache whenever he tried to look ‘under the hood’ so to speak. Still, the idea of it he vaguely understood.

As the Master of Death, he too abided by a contract, though he hadn’t signed anything. When he used the powers that he exclusively had rights to, it came with a stipend: only as much as he would need, only to protect the continuity of the universe. He wasn’t Death’s master so much as his helper—the title probably came from the fact that one, he was immortal, and two, the scope of his powers were greater than Death’s.

They weren’t master and servant; they were partners—even though Death liked to call him by that stupid title (probably because he knew it would annoy him). As such, Harry was aware through Death that beings were outlets of power, not creators or origins. Much like he and Death, the powers of this world also needed to be appeased and contracted with.

He was trying to do exactly that, but Harry sensed he had barely brushed the surface of elemental power. At most, what he was feeling was residual energies from the real source—leftovers, crumbs, whatever it was called—just enough left behind for his still immature senses to pick them up. The more familiar he grew with them, the easier it was to see and interact with them.

When he could take no more, Harry opened his eyes to find his body damp with sweat. He had physically done nothing more than sit here under this tree for hours on end, and yet as he tried to stand, his body ached as if he had run a marathon. It was true then, that in this world the soul and body were deeply connected…

This was as far as he could reach without practicing the elements. To do that properly, he would have to follow the laws of this world—that which he could only figure out if he attended the proper classes. In one way, attending Hogwarts was a good thing, but from another eye, schools had regulations and guidelines he had to follow.

Things could not just be done at his own pace—though, it was more acceptable in a cultivation school to stay in school for years and years. Some of the older students were in their mid-twenties. He was taking his time now, but Harry knew it wouldn’t be wise to stay that long. He wanted to learn from the world outside of Hogwarts as well…and to find out what happened to his parents, to find out if Voldemort was tied to him again, then he would need to graduate.

If Harry revealed his element, he wondered if Tom would finally appear.

* * *

“W-What…is this…”

The examiner stumbled back. His hands shook. Was he really seeing what he was seeing? No, something had to have gone wrong! He made a mistake. There was a mistake. It was _impossible_ —more likely for Hogwarts to be burned to the ground than for _this_ to happen.

Harry Potter sat in the center of a pentacle. Inscriptions as old as Hogwarts herself glowed on the ground. At six different points, spread equidistant from each other, there were six identical bowls containing representations of the respective elements. Each one pulsed strongly with power—primary elements. In his entire lifetime, the examiner didn’t think he’d ever run across someone with _six primary elements_!

What was this insane luck? Or was he in Hell instead? To get such a fortunate boon, had this boy sold his soul to the devil?

“Ah, can’t be right!” the examiner exclaimed. That was his conclusion after a moment of jumbled thoughts. Something had gone wrong—probably the assistants hadn’t cleaned the room properly, leaving behind residual essences of the last test. Yes, that had to be it! Regardless of the fact that the cleaning was always thorough, they had to have made a mistake this time. There was no other feasible conclusion. “Something has gone wrong. You’ll have to retake the test in another room.”

Harry didn’t seem to mind. His form rose, no sign of rebellion in sight, and waited patiently for the examiner to dispel the circle so he could leave.

They tried an adjacent room and ended with the same results. Still the examiner didn’t believe his eyes, so he next took Harry to the farthest room down the hall. This one, certainly, must’ve been cleaned. He went through the motions and watched Harry with a keen, searching eye, but there was no funny business to be found.

The results were the same.

“Really impossible!” the examiner wailed. “This can’t be right! Six elements?! A genius…no, past a genius—there hasn’t been such fortune ever recorded before! Who has six primary elements? No one would believe this—this—”

“That’s quite enough.”

One of Harry’s closed eyes slid open. He resisted grinning at the person who had opened the doors.

“Grand Master Riddle! Oh, thank goodness you’re here! This one is incompetent—someone of your mastery can surely explain this devil luck!”

“Six primary elements,” Tom stated. “What’s there to explain?”

“But—that’s—impossible!”

Tom narrowed his eyes, and immediately the examiner flinched and began to prostrate himself on the ground.

“Forgive this ignorant one, Grand Master!” he begged. “Mistake—I’ve made a mistake!”

“He is my disciple,” Tom merely said, turning away in a _swish_ of dark cloth. “Having six primary elements is only natural.”

Harry laughed. “I’m glad you have so much faith in me, Master Tom!” As he stood and dusted himself off, he said, “Long time no see.”

“Come.” With a flick of his wrist, Tom dispelled the circle and Harry obliged by walking forward. He was glad Tom had come so quickly—Harry was worried for a second that the examiner would make him test in all the rooms, and it had already gotten boring by the third time. Naturally, he knew Tom had been watching him somehow, but it was another matter entirely if he deigned it worth his time to ‘rescue’ his disciple from boredom.

“You took your time,” Tom said once they were far away from the testing rooms.

Harry hummed. “Just wanted to be thorough! Didn’t know you were waiting, otherwise I would’ve asked what my deadline was. Your disciple will naturally meet his master’s expectations.”

Tom made a noise of irritation. “Meet and not exceed, I see.”

“Master Tom, this disciple understands the importance of punctuality,” Harry said seriously. “If one arrives too early, one risks the anger of his host. If one arrives too late, he disrespects both the guests and the host!”

The Grand Master, instead of punishing him for his cheek, considered his answer. “Who would you rather appease, the host or the guests?” he demanded.

“Neither,” Harry answered without missing a beat. “The host is but one, and the guests are too many. I would rather appease my master, who treats his disciple extremely well.”

“Barely passable answer,” Tom said, “but there is time yet to improve your word play.”

Harry finally let the grin he had been suppressing loose. “Honesty is the best policy between master and disciple. Master Tom is infinitely wise, so naturally he’ll see through whatever I say, but if my words are straightforward, so too is our relationship. A disciple who hides his intentions toward his master is a foolhardy one. I’d prefer to err on the side of caution.”

“ _Do you_ have intentions?”

He tried to look innocent. “If Master Tom sets a deadline, naturally I’ll develop intentions to meet them.”

“‘An honest man is always a child,’” Tom muttered under his breath. Then, louder, he said, “We’ve arrived.”

Harry followed him through the door, matching him step for step behind him. The second all of him made it through the doorway, the only exit and entrance to the room closed and all there is, is darkness. Then he felt the air move—Tom’s sleeve as he raised a hand—and light returned.

They were in a room filled with—well actually, he didn’t know. There were a lot of things; bookshelves and cabinets, walls filled and barely enough floor space to walk properly. Several sheathed swords leaned against a wall, scrolls were protruding from a shelf not very far away, and books were stacked atop boxes, platters, loose leaf papers and all other assortments of things. In short, the place was a mess, and Harry knew then that this room could not possibly belong to Tom.

Tom wouldn’t stand for such disorder.

The Grand Master looked down at him from over his shoulder. “Reach out with your senses. If anything appeals to you, speak.”

Harry wasn’t surprised that Tom knew him well enough to speak in such a manner. He had been observing him for two years. If Harry had proven frivolous or wanting, then the man wouldn’t have spoken in such a frank and blasé tone. But Harry did not want for anything even though he had nothing, and so the godly superiority of a Grand Master did not make an appearance. It would have no effect on him, and Tom was not a wasteful person.

It was this careful tailoring that supported his previous statement: Tom treated Harry extremely well as a disciple. He could have acted coldly (not that this wasn’t relatively cold; it was straight and concise was what it was), but he didn’t. He could have controlled more, but he hadn’t. He could have demanded more of him, tested him himself, or perhaps never met him and pushed his responsibility to another senior disciple…but he didn’t.

 _Appeals_. That too was a carefully chosen word, even spoken in the short manner that it was. Harry understood that the second he reached out his senses, because everything in the room called to him. In varying levels, yes, but each object desired he reach over and pick it up, each item wished to be acknowledged and chosen by him.

It was not ‘ _if anything calls to you, speak_.’ It was ‘ _if anything_ appeals _to you, speak_.’ Harry didn’t know what these things were, or what their usage was, but he sensed the elusive auras of elements over them. As a scholar it interested him, but as far as his gut feeling went, nothing was enough to make him navigate through the mess.

He considered for a moment telling Tom. That thought was gone the next second as his desire for mischief took hold.

Unfortunately, Tom caught on fast.

“Nothing is fine,” the Grand Master said, and upon his words the door opened and Harry was ushered out.

He unsuccessfully tried to hide a pout. It would’ve been great fun to stand there in awkward silence for another five minutes. An impatient Tom was an expressive Tom, after all.

“May I inquire of my venerable master, what was that room?” _And what were those things_ , but Harry thought he would find out that answer quite soon.

“Nothing more than Hogwarts’ storage room. It is shared among the experts, so it isn’t surprising you found nothing there.”

It was probably a lot more than a simple storage room. Harry wanted to snort, but that probably would earn him some punishment. Instead, he gave a verbose thanks to Tom and left it at that. Despite his interest, he didn’t mind leaving early. Playing with Tom was much more fun than a dusty little room filled with knick-knacks.

If any expert heard him call those things _knick-knacks_ , they surely would’ve spit blood, but Harry’s thoughts went unheard. It was coincidentally like-master-like-disciple, as to a Grand Master like Riddle, those objects were nothing much—semi-useful trash, like how a cheap product would beget cheap (though visible) results. One man’s trash was another man’s treasure; those ‘cheap’ things were worth enough to make a dent in an expert’s coffers.

Eventually they reached another room, and this one Harry immediately identified as Tom’s. It was all very orderly, and the seats were arranged to have a good view of the door. There were no personal items in sight—pictures, awards, trinkets, all bare—but that was just so… _Tom_. If he did have anything, they were probably hidden in plain sight.

The bookshelves were the only things that could give an inkling to the room’s owner, but the actual books were numerous and easily spanned across all sorts of subjects equally—one would be hard pressed to find anything about their owner through titles alone. After a small second’s glance, Harry turned his eyes away to respect his privacy. He didn’t want to find anything and make the wrong connections.

Tom didn’t stop or offer him a seat as they walked through the door. Instead, he led them to another room—much smaller, but no less neat—that, like the storage room, contained a variety of objects. _Unlike_ the Hogwarts experts’ storage room, there was actually space to walk, and all of the items seemed to be arranged in some type of order he wasn’t aware of.

Harry refrained from spreading his senses until he was told to. Who knew what sort of dangerous items Tom had in his possession. Though he was curious, this body definitely wasn’t strong enough to handle trouble right now.

There was a long table placed in the center of the room. Tom motioned Harry to stay put as he walked around it, and then he beckoned him forward. There was an array of items laid out like a shopkeeper’s stall, but their composition had no rhyme or reason that Harry could tell, other than that they all fit on the table. Some larger objects existed in the room, but they were placed out of the way so perhaps they weren’t relevant?

Harry looked up to Tom, almost expectantly.

“You are quite the curious disciple,” the Grand Master began. “Your abilities are within the boundaries of this realm, yet I still find myself wondering where you truly came from.”

Aside from his _actual_ origins as the Master of Death, Harry was about as clueless as Tom on this matter. He had woken up in the _yamen_ in the Dursleys’ care and knew nothing but their word—which obviously could not be trusted. Instead of saying so, he smiled politely and waited for Tom to continue. It was unlikely he’d be told anything of note though; if Harry was in Tom’s position, the last thing he wanted was his disciple to get a swelled head. What Harry had shown of himself was encouraging, but he was still only thirteen.

“Feed my curiosity,” Tom softly commanded. “I took an educated guess on what would suit you best. Was I wrong?”

Before Harry spread his senses, he minded himself and purposely said, “Thanks for your care, Master.” It lacked his usual mischievous spirit—at least, he hoped so; it was hard to take himself seriously with all the weird situations he ended up in—and only when Tom acknowledged his thanks did he turn his attention to the objects.

Harry wanted to make his priorities clear. He knew exactly what he probably looked like to his master—tranquil, detached, friendly by choice and not by nature. What value did a person have to someone who unconsciously mocked everyone, including himself?

Yes, that was how he was now. He didn’t have any personal investment in this life as of yet; his friends were shadows of the friends he had in his first life, stopping him from truly growing attached. If anything, this time around he was more isolated than the last fifty or so lives. Living as ‘Harry Potter’ again, only in a different universe, threw him off. What was the difference between _this_ Harry Potter and the Master of Death Harry Potter? In fact, who _was_ that Harry? Sometimes—not by choice—he forgot.

His current identity lied in a gray area exactly because of this predicament. In most other lives he could believe he was someone else, and live in the moment of that character. However, here he was as Harry Potter again, and he didn’t exactly remember what that was like. Objectively, he could recall his first life, but feeling it again? Ah, it was a struggle. Should he even _be_ that Harry? He was stuck.

The question he did not want to contemplate had been shoved to the back of his mind the last two years. Naturally, his stagnancy would show in his actions. This was why he wanted to make his priorities clear to Riddle—people over materials, he valued people over materials. Even as he spent most of his time focused on training, learning, coming to know this world, people would come first. He would not trade his relationships for a priceless treasure.

Maybe another child would.

He wouldn’t.

Harry spread his senses and focused in on the table’s array. Indeed, these objects were a definite grade above the others in the storage room. The appeal was stronger, and his fingers itched to reach out and take one. _Which one_ …well, that was a different matter.

Some of them were stronger contenders than the others, but he was still hesitant to choose.

Tom saw his plight. “Move those that are strong. They are all harmless artifacts.”

Harry believed him with no qualms. There was no reason for his master to lie to him, so he singled out three of then ten in the array that were the strongest, but he couldn’t pick between. One was a gold medallion engraved with a complex mandala pattern, another was a painted tube depicting a koi fish pond, and the third was an ornate pair of bronze scissors. These three he picked up and set in front of him.

Then, he hesitated again. At the very end of the table was a black notebook, the least decorated of all the objects. It looked distinctly out of place, though if he viewed it with his senses then the dark element radiating off of it made it no different from the rest. It called to him in a different way—while the other items whispered and beckoned and hummed, the notebook _cajoled_. It murmured to him like a sweet lullaby from his infancy, called not his name but his soul like an old friend.

A steel ball dropped into the pit of his stomach. Obstruction warred within. He knew this feeling—he knew this feeling intimately well. It pressed against him from the inside out, squeezed his heart like an ex-lover strangling his throat. This apprehension, this closeness, this temptation—

All that was missing was the warning sign of a bleeding scar.

So, he hesitated. Magic as he knew it did not exist in this world—but the soul was another matter. Could it be broken, splintered? Would it even have the same anchoring effect as a horcrux? He couldn’t tell, didn’t have the magic to sense it, but the notebook was like a punch in the gut.

Tom Riddle was literally right in front of him.

Unlike the diary horcrux in his first life, the black notebook was bare of a name. Still it was familiar and still it attracted him.

Did he pick it up? Would that tell something to Tom that he didn’t want to say? Or was he overthinking it, because this world was different so it could follow that the horcrux objects had different significance as well…

Did he even want to deny a connection to Tom, given the choice? That was the only question he knew the answer to. It was ‘no’— _no_ , he didn’t want to deny that a connection was there. If he did, then he wouldn’t have turned down Dumbledore that day, wouldn’t have been a cheeky little shit and called Tom by his name.

Very carefully, he pushed all three objects forward to make room for the notebook. Then he reached over, took it into his hands like it was a family heirloom, and then placed it back down right in front of him. When he looked up, it was to find Tom’s smug smirk gazing down at him from above.

The look was gone in the next second.

“Be straightforward with me,” the Grand Master said, echoing Harry’s prior claims, “How strong do these objects pull you?”

“On a scale of one to ten, probably a seven,” Harry admitted. Then, he tapped the notebook. “This is an eight…for other reasons.”

Tom didn’t look surprised. It was practically a confirmation that he too felt connected to Harry.

“Only an eight?” he pressed.

“Eight is a conservative answer,” Harry agreed. More seriously, he said, “I’m not entirely sure if I can rate it on the same scale. My personal interest is not wholly separate from its appeal, but they’re two different things all the same.”

Tom looked neither disappointed or pleased. “Not for you, then.”

“Master Tom, what exactly are these things?”

“I was waiting for you to ask.”

Of course he was. Harry pouted like he had lost some children’s game, losing nothing but a small notion of pride and intangible value that he himself had wagered to no one. This, however, brought up a point that he otherwise could not easily address. “A straightforward disciple leaves his wellbeing to his master’s magnanimity,” he began carefully. “Your disciple believes he is in good hands; so, will you forgive me for being frank with you, Master?”

Grand Master Riddle looked at him without judgement. “There is nothing to forgive,” he replied just as carefully.

Harry wasn’t completely satisfied yet. “Will I ever need to beg your pardon for my honesty?”

His master hummed in consideration. “I admit that I am not fond of tea leaves in my tea, but the best tea is brewed with loose leaves. Your master is not unreasonable.”

He wasn’t completely reassured, but it was enough. If Voldemort’s insanity lurked in the depths of this Tom Riddle, then he refused to be taken by surprise—all the same, he didn’t want Tom to be his enemy either, and Harry knew he struggled with limiting himself to emotionally distant relationships. Honesty was a big part of trust and attachment, so it was naturally important that Tom was fine with Harry doing what he usually did.

Tom continued on to answer his question. “These objects are containers for cultivation techniques. The strongest techniques are held within artifacts—those you will see in the library are subpar. Experts keep their secrets close at heart; no self-respecting expert would explicitly write their best techniques in a book for anyone to practice.”

That made sense, somewhat. No longer afraid of asking questions, Harry asked, “How can a technique be held in an object?”

“It is a complex art that requires a mastery of the soul,” Tom said. “However, to learn techniques from a cultivation container is not so difficult. One merely needs to meet the threshold requirement—a limit set by the creator of the container. That is the call. It is an acknowledgement that you have met the requirements to learn the techniques held within the container.”

Harry’s inquiry had set Tom in full lecture mode. The Grand Master continued, pointing out the particular containers that were set in front of Harry. “The medallion contains the Revolving Planets Technique. This scroll container has the World River Technique. The scissors contain the Seven Elemental Steps Technique. All three are compatible with your six primary elements, as are the others on this table.”

“And the notebook?”

“That one is an outlier,” Tom said. “It _does_ contain a cultivation technique, but it is incomplete. It was an experiment of my youth. Think nothing of it.”

Harry certainly could _not_ think ‘nothing of it,’ but he wasn’t about to tell Tom that. Instead, he stored the information in his head and asked no more.

“Search the rest of the room,” Tom said. “Pick out any that feel stronger than the three you’ve chosen.”

From his tone of voice, Harry didn’t know whether Tom expected him to actually find something or not. Still, there was no reason to be cautious, so he extended his senses and followed his feet. Three more items ended up on the table—an incense burner, a blank mahjong tile, and an earring.

Despite the notebook being an outlier, Tom made no move to remove it from the table, so now there were seven items in front of Harry.

The incense burner was small enough to fit in the palm of his thirteen-year-old hands. Its bowl-like design looked like a lotus flower in full bloom, and the lid had a carved pattern of flying dragons. The earring was a small plate with what looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs engraved into the golden metal; not one centimeter of space was left unused.

On the other hand, the mahjong tile was uncharacteristically simple. It was thick and had some weight in his hands, but the surface was smooth like glass and tapping it felt like marble. It was a completely blank tile, and the only reason he knew front from back was because the backside was colored an inky red instead of white.

Tom hummed contemplatively. “How curious. These are all stronger than the previous three?”

Harry confirmed it.

“The objects I placed on the table were compatible with all six of your elements. The rest of the containers in this room are not…and yet your pull to these are stronger than to a technique that maximizes your compatibility. Curious indeed,” Tom murmured to himself. “Well, in the end the choice is yours. The incense burner contains the Fiery Punisher Technique, the earring contains the Everlasting Sandstorm Technique, and the tile contains the Thunderbird Stormcaller Technique.”

Tom could not make sense of it, but Harry did. If cultivation techniques nourished the soul, that meant they fortified what was already there.

He had not always been so calm, so tranquil. In many of his past lives his emotions had gotten the best of him—despair, anger, depression, sorrow. The Fiery Punisher Technique recognized that inclination within him.

The Everlasting Sandstorm Technique, if he took it quite literally, singled out one of his past lives—one of his strongest, if he was measuring overall power and ability. Khepri had been a desert warrior; she had been born in a time of war and she had died in a time of war. She had fought for peace and unification, but those dreams had never been realized. All she had wanted to do was protect her people, but it was at the cost of many others.

Harry had mixed feelings about her. Khepri had been him at his strongest and his weakest, simultaneously. Hypocrisy had run her rampant, he admitted, but in the end she had been true to herself and her desires. Her selfish pursuits had been for the sake of the others she cared about; her friends, family, village and eventually her lover. He hadn’t fully recovered from living as Khepri until well into the life after her; she herself had numbered early in the amount of lives he’d lived, so it made sense her influence over his soul was large.

The Thunderbird Stormcaller Technique, well. There were multiple ways to analyze that. The most obvious—both literal and symbolic—was the connection to the lightning bolt scar of his first life. Its similarity to the sowilo rune also matched the mythological thunderbird—strength and energy.

Tom was waiting. Harry nibbled on his lip as he weighed the pros and cons. From his classes, he already knew that sacrificing a primary or even secondary element was not something usually done. However, their call and his returning interest was undeniable.

“Which elements do I lose?” he finally asked.

His master obliged in pointing them out. “The Fiery Punisher Technique is not compatible with water, nor is the Everlasting Sandstorm Technique. The Thunderbird Stormcaller Technique is not compatible with earth.”

So he was only losing one element if he chose one of the three. That wasn’t so bad. By this time, Harry had already discarded the other three containers—these meant more to him somehow, and he had lived enough lives to know his gut usually made better decisions than his brain. In retrospect, that was really quite terrible, but it had saved him by the skin of his teeth enough times that he overcame his embarrassment.

“Master Tom?”

The Grand Master considered him. “Your soul knows itself best,” he finally said. “What’s in a technique is not only what it allows you to do, but how it nurtures your soul. In that respect, elements are a common guide, but they are not the end-all-be-all. Whichever you choose, your luck is good.” An indulgent smirk found its way to his face. “Not even a cultivation technique can obstruct it.”

Tom didn’t know how close he actually was. Harry wanted to laugh, but he grinned instead. Feeling playful, he decided to tease him a bit. “Master Tom, you really know how to treat this disciple well. In the future I’ll also learn how to treat you well; surely my senior brothers and sisters already have a lot of experience!”

“I have yet to punish you for your disrespectful address,” Tom warned. “You’re up to eight, now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi
> 
> (finals are here rip in pieces)


	5. Chapter 5

“So I see why you like calling me ‘Master’ now,” Harry began, taking a cool drink of water from a waterskin. Draco had shoved it into his hands before he went out, and for good reason. The sun had decided without explanation that it would be scorching hot today, and it left him sweaty and uncomfortable even beneath the shade.

Though waterskins seemed rather old fashioned—why use a waterskin when there were canteens, or even water bottles?—apparently, much like the old Wizarding World, the _jianghu_ had its own version of convenience. The waterskin that Draco had given him was much larger than it seemed, using the same technology as interspacial rings, and so they were superior to _yamen_ alternatives.

Cloth was much more compliant with expansion inscriptions than plastic.

 _Oh?_ Death replied, focusing on him now that they were being addressed.

“Mmhm. It’s really quite fun.”

 _We are glad you are enjoying yourself, Master,_ was Death’s dry reply.

Harry hummed. He was hot and sweaty, but not tired, and there was a little part of him that was a bit lonely, too. It was that same part that begged to talk to someone, and if it wasn’t for Death, he was sure he’d be talking to himself right now.

“About the trouble you ran into…any leads?”

He could feel Death’s presence sharpen at the back of his mind. _No,_ they replied.

Harry frowned. Frustrating Death was not a simple matter that just anything could achieve—he would know, he had experience trying—and it was even rarer that the being showed any sort of real emotion at all. How serious could this matter be? How serious could it _get_? Harry didn’t like the foreboding feeling he got from the direction of his thoughts.

Still, they were friends. Partners. Leaving Death to deal with everything had never been part of his plan.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

 _Complications arose,_ Death said, sounding short. _The situation has...moved out of our jurisdiction._

Oh. That _would_ frustrate them. Fortunately, there was an easy fix. Harry smiled as he said, “Well then, I’ll just—”

And was promptly cut off.

_No. You will do nothing._

 Affronted, Harry scowled. “And why not?”

Death sighed. _It is dangerous, Master,_ they said, amending their uncalled vehemence. _We cannot allow you to use your astral body. It may be a trap._

“Yeah, well, dealing with dangerous things is kind of my job. You know, the one you gave me.”

_Your previous jobs, while amounting to some degree of risk, never put your existence at stake._

Harry huffed at the reply. He uncrossed his legs, but made no move to stand as he set the waterskin aside. “This doesn’t seem like a problem that’ll just go away though,” he pointed out. Years of arguing told him when he needed to switch gears. “And it might get worse. We’ve seen things that have gotten worse. Remember when that corrupted soul got caught in the Wheel? Doing nothing is _definitely_ worse than doing something.”

 _This is not, as you say, a glitch in the system. It is premeditated,_ said Death.

The way that final word settled in his mind made Harry shiver. “By who? What?”

 _That is out of our jurisdiction,_ was the flat reply. Clearly the lack of an answer disturbed both of them.

Guilt clawed at his throat. Harry made a noise of disapproval. “You mean it’s in _my_ jurisdiction,” he mumbled, “And you won’t let me take care of it. I can deal with risk, you know. The fact that I have this job at all tells me putting my existence at stake is a common wager. You don’t need to baby me.”

_We do not intend to. However, there are consequences that can be avoided given time, and time is a fairly cheap commodity for you. It would be foolish not to take advantage of it._

“You’d make more sense if you stopped being so vague,” Harry complained. It was an age-old argument. Death would never stop being vague, and _he_ would never stop playing catch up with the being. Mentioning it put an end to their current conversation, so he took up a new one. “What’s the big deal with this anyway? Why am I Harry Potter again?”

_…You waited two years to ask that?_

“When you put it that way, it sounds bad,” he muttered. “I just thought it didn’t matter, but I’ve never had a repeat life before. With this… _thing_ going on, and _this_ happening, I really hope they’re two unrelated matters. I’ve lived enough lives with someone after my life to recognize the patterns.”

 _Rest assured, Master. We are in full control of your reincarnation cycle,_ Death said.

“Oh, well in that case, I feel so reassured. Just look at me, no worries at all. If I had wrinkles before this, I’d have lost them right after your wonderful bit of reassurance. Real confidence builder, that. I’m so glad we’re friends.”

 _Your faith in us is palpable_ , they replied dryly. _We are flattered by your trust._

Harry snorted. “As you should be.”

* * *

For most of their year, it was a long time coming. For Harry, he hadn’t even thought about her until she was right in front of his face.

Daphne Greengrass looked murderous. Harry thought she had woken up on the wrong side of the bed today—her hair was impeccable, but her eyes told a different story. Filled with storm clouds, they pointed at another source of her anger—something that she couldn’t control. So Harry didn’t blame her too much. The poor girl was just having a bad day in general, and whatever Harry had done (or whatever she’d thought he’d done) had just made it worse.

“Good morning, sister,” he said, which in retrospect might not have been the best thing to say. It was a custom that Harry had always wanted to pick up, where disciples under the same master addressed each other as sister and brother. Having family, even though it wasn’t by blood, was an appealing concept.

Pansy, at Daphne’s side as she always was (if not on Draco’s arm), frowned as she looked back and forth between them. She’d been pleased when Daphne started to ignore him because that meant she wouldn’t have to choose between her beloved friend and future husband. Unfortunately, Harry never planned on stagnating his cultivation, and Daphne was not one to ignore a rival.

“Just because Master gave you a cultivation technique yesterday, you’re acting arrogant already?” She sneered, trying to look intimidating and failing in Harry’s eyes. Rage did not suit her. It was the cool chill of ice that would’ve had more effect, but she was still only thirteen and didn’t know better.

That aside, Harry wondered how she came across that information. The examination had been private, and they hadn’t passed by anyone on their way to his rooms. Tom also had no reason to tell her these things, or have someone tell her as it may be. Really, Daphne had no business here—it was just between him and Tom, and anyone else who thought differently ran headfirst into the wall of truth.

He had said hello to her and this was the cold response he got? How was he supposed to reply politely to that? This girl wasn’t giving him any space to maneuver at all.

“Sister, if you’re hungry, you should have breakfast before we talk.”

 _That_ had come out of left field. Well he didn’t want to embarrass her. Harry hoped she’d get the message, because there was already a bit of a crowd forming around them.

“Who told you that you could call me that? In a barrel of trash, you’re at the bottom! Don’t even think about climbing up,” Daphne spat. She pushed past him, shoving him aside with her shoulder. That was when Harry felt it—this girl had actually gotten to 3rd rank in two years. She definitely had god-level potential.

As a 1st rank, when someone of the 3rd rank shoved him and really wanted him to move, Harry of course fell over. It was like a boulder rolling past a pebble. Move? If he didn’t, he’d be crushed!

He was surprised Daphne didn’t want to bully him a bit more, though. She was in a bad mood—wasn’t it second nature to take that out on someone? Harry stared after her until she rounded the corner with her small group of followers. People whispered in the background, but he paid them no mind as he stood and brushed himself off.

* * *

“Someone needs to…to slap her!” Hermione growled, stabbing at her eggs with her fork. “I mean, _violence isn’t the answer_ , but…!”

Ron swallowed before he said, “Trust me, sometimes violence _is_ the answer. Like now. That’s how you deal with a bully, according to my brothers. Slap ‘em back once and they don’t want to deal with someone who fights back.”

“That’s horrible!” Hermione exclaimed. Then she paused and considered it. “You think it’d work?”

“Maybe against bottom-tier trash, but against Daphne Greengrass? You’re full of dreams, Granger,” Draco said with a sniff. “He’ll get into a lot more trouble than a small shove if that happens. Besides, Grand Master Riddle doesn’t approve of in-fighting between his disciples.”

“Harry hasn’t even done anything! If anything, _she_ should be the one getting in trouble. Why hasn’t Grand Master Riddle done anything about it by now? It’s not like her antagonism is a secret.”

That was true. After the morning’s events, the news that Daphne had insulted and physically shoved her sect brother had spread like wildfire. Yet, nothing happened. Now the grapevine was saying that Harry really _was_ a mistake and Riddle wanted her to take him out, like training a hunting dog to catch prey.

Neville nudged him under the table. Harry, the one being wronged, shrugged in reply.

“I can’t believe this,” Hermione continued to mutter, “He’s supposed to be your master. Why isn’t he doing anything? You’re being bullied! That’s not okay!”

“Don’t worry about it,” Harry said. He reached around Ron to pat her shoulder. “Riddle has a reason for everything.”

“That makes it even worse! What kind of reason justifies letting you be bullied? Doesn’t he care at all?”

 _Probably not_ , but Harry wasn’t about to say that. Instead, he said, “He treats me very well. It was just a small altercation anyway, hardly anything. Nothing to worry about!”

Now Draco was the one frowning. “If you keep acting like that, everyone and their dog will step on you,” he warned. “I don’t know how the _yamen_ is and I don’t care, but here the strong bully the weak—”

“That’s horrible!”

“—And that’s how it is,” Draco finished, ignoring Hermione’s exclamation. “Unless you’ve got a name to protect you. I’m not saying anything about Grand Master Riddle, but if you’re on your own, you can’t let people wrong you!”

Harry hummed. “She’s my sect sister though; I don’t want to start a feud.”

“ _She_ obviously doesn’t care,” Ron picked up. “I’m sure you’ve got rights to retaliation by now. People are slandering you—”

“Big words, Weasley.”

“Shut up, Malfoy. Anyway, people are slandering you, you’ve been hurt, and no one is seeking justice for you. Don’t even ask her for a duel—you’d probably get your ass handed to you, no offense mate—just punch her.”

Harry snorted. “I highly doubt a 3rd rank would let a 1st rank punch them, but thanks for the thought.”

“3rd rank? She’s 3rd rank now? Bloody hell,” Ron groaned, “You’re pretty screwed then, mate. But in the future, once you pass her, don’t forget about this! She picked a fight first!”

Grudges weren’t very healthy. Harry made a vague noise in the back of his throat before he began eating again, ending the conversation for the moment. Was he a bit bothered? Yes, and no. People weren’t that simple—Dudley had shown him that all the way back in his first life, and all his other lives reinforced that idea. Daphne must have a feasible reason for her actions, even if they weren’t very good.

Hate him for taking away her glory? What was there to hate? As far as the rest of the school was concerned, Harry was still useless trash, even with his purple soul realm. What was there to be jealous over? She was Riddle’s disciple now, too. In terms of family lineage, she was a Greengrass and as far as she knew, he was someone from the _yamen_. Ah, teenagers could be so unreasonable sometimes. Dislike people for petty reasons. Hate without understanding what it means to hate. Bully, because they don’t know how to deal with their own insecurities.

He wasn’t perfect by any means, but he could still criticize her. Having problems was one thing, causing problems for other people was another!

Don’t let people step on you, his friends said. Don’t be such a pushover. Don’t do this, don’t do that, why aren’t you fighting back? Harry heard this enough times to tune it all out before it was even said. Did he really have to fight over every little thing? They say if one gives an inch, they’ll take a mile, but why start a war over only a mile? Encroach on worthless land, he’d give them the worthless land! Then it would be theirs to waste resources on, while all the valuables he would keep to himself.

Harry stood up. “I’m going to go train. You might not see me for a while.”

Hermione was ambivalent, but Ron openly voiced his support. “Yeah, you show Greengrass you’re better than her!”

Draco looked dubious. “Closed door training when you’re only 1st rank? You’ll learn faster by taking classes. Hogwarts’ instructors aren’t a joke, you know.”

Harry shook his head. “I’ll be around, but classes won’t do much for me now. I’ll come back after cultivating for a bit.”

“Be careful,” Neville said quietly. “…You know what you’re doing, right?”

“There’s no time like the present to learn.” When his fellow dorm mate shot him a horrified look, Harry amended his statement for his sake. “I’ll be fine. It’s not like I’m going to do anything dangerous—” _relatively speaking, anyway_ , “—and even if you think he’s not looking out for me, Riddle won’t let anything serious happen!”

He was a valuable resource, after all. If he wasn’t, then yesterday wouldn’t have happened.

* * *

Hogwarts had three major unsupervised training areas. The first was the Black Lake, the closest to the castle and one of the most popular, since there was a low chance of death as most creatures were non-hostile. The second was the Forbidden Forest, which was definitely more dangerous with its aggressive residents. The third was the Firestone Caverns, a bit of a journey since it took traveling to the nearby Hogsmeade first. This was the most dangerous training area, since many students got lost in the maze-like structure.

The only part of these training areas that were guarded was the border. Otherwise, students were on their own once they walked in, and they were on their own until they came out. These areas were also occasionally open to the public; any non-fugitive character was welcome to test their luck, as long as it was the right season.

It would be too dangerous to embark on an expedition now, but Harry was planning on it in the near future. Right now, he had to focus on at least discovering the basics of the Thunderbird Stormcaller Technique.

Yes, he had sacrificed earth for it. Harry Potter had never been of the earth anyway—his element was found in the sky, on a broomstick or riding a hippogriff. He wasn’t one hundred percent confident in his choice, but he’d gone with it anyway—the only other option was Tom Riddle’s diary, and _that_ he wasn’t so sure he wanted.

Finding a safe, private spot to cultivate was not the easiest thing in the world if he wanted to avoid his dorm room. So, Harry had gone to one of the cultivation facilities that Hogwarts offered and rented out a private room. Since he was only 1st rank, he was given three hours per session, and only one session per week. It was a very limited time slot, but he was sure he could get _something_ figured out before time was up.

The room was small and bare, the hardwood cold beneath his feet. Harry decided to sit in the middle and plunked down, crossing his legs and settling in the most stable position he could find. He took out the mahjong tile, cupped it in his laced hands, and began to meditate.

Riddle had not known anything about the Thunderbird Stormcaller Technique. He had never run across another practitioner, and he only knew of its existence because he was well-read in the realm of esoteric books…some of which had come straight from a dead man’s ancient tomb. Harry was mostly on his own.

Little by little, he began to dive into the profound mysteries of the Thunderbird Stormcaller Technique. Through meditation and tapping into the secrets held in the mahjong tile, he could slowly discover its unique skills and paths.

 _Storm brewer._ He stood in front of a cauldron, staring at the miniature storm clouds bubbling within its depths. Angry shades of grey mixed with bolts of light stared up at him in return. There was a flash, as if it wanted to leap out of the cauldron, but he took the wooden stirring stick and quelled it with quick, precise movements.

When he lifted the spoon out of the cauldron, the clouds poured down like corrupted mist. He took a breath and blew on the sample, watching as the gaseous substance turned direction and hissed at the contact with his breath. It had the appearance of dry ice but the sound of boiling water. Against his better judgement, Harry reached out with his free hand and let the runoff dribble over his finger. A frozen chill of electricity sparked and ran across the length of his arm, but the pain was secondary to his fascination.

_For each disaster that is brought, land is ruined and life is destroyed. There is no guard against nature, no immunity granted to chosen few. All kneel in the face of nature’s wrath._

_Lightning rod._ Harry stood alone in the middle of a wide open plain. Rolling clouds rumbled above him, and in the distance, raindrops dotted the sky. It was the calm before the storm, and he stood in the middle, completely bare to its mercy.

Somehow, instead of feeling vulnerable, he felt at peace. This was where he belonged, where he was supposed to be. It wasn’t home, but this foreign place he had never been before wasn’t strange either. The familiarity struck him all at once. He could feel himself smiling. The clouds above rumbled, and then in the next moment, lightning streaked down from the sky fresh like wet paint.

The bolts converged unto him. Harry took it all: cold, hot, and burning, a fire with a spark and ice with more sting than chill—but it didn’t hurt. In fact, the electricity circulated within him, so natural that it felt like it belonged. Just as the blood that pumped through his veins and the air he took in with his breath, it was not any more foreign to his body than his organs were.

Then he exhaled, and let that ephemeral life-blood sink into the ground.

_Nature is not to be controlled. There are conduits that lead, just as rivers flow in one direction and filter back into the ocean, but no one being may dictate creation or destruction. There is call, there is askance, and in baring oneself to nature’s eyes and hands, there is answer._

Two foundational methods of the Thunderbird Stormcaller Technique—not a bad haul for a three-hour session. At least, now he had a place to start. Harry hummed, heading out to find the head of Slytherin House.

Severus Snape was the premier Alchemy professor at Hogwarts. He was also Slytherin head, just as he had been in Harry’s first life. Thus, he would definitely have a handy cauldron or two he could borrow—as long as he didn’t hate him on sight again. About that, Harry figured it was better to find out now rather than later when he was taking his class.

The Storm Brewer method didn’t seem to need any ingredients—all he needed was a cauldron and a stirring stick. It combined both his innate soul energy and elemental control, which would speed up his overall development faster than if he practiced Lightning Rod first. Since that was exactly what he needed, Harry decided to kill two birds with one stone and visit his future professor as well.

He wasn’t sure what he wanted to get from it, really. Would Snape know what happened to his parents? Would he just hate him for his likeliness to James Potter, again? Or would he be apathetic; mostly indifferent other than the proper amount of care a head of house should have toward his student?

Well, if that didn’t work out, he _could_ always go bother Tom. It was for cultivation, after all, and the man seemed willing enough to assist him. He’d given him the mahjong tile, hadn’t he? And if that didn’t work out, he’d figure something out. Surely there had to be an empty potions room somewhere in Hogwarts. Speaking of rooms, did the Room of Requirement exist? Harry made a note to check that out later.

He’d already figured out that many of the things from his first life did not carry over to this life, which was natural since cultivation could only mirror magic’s effects so much. Magic was the wider of the two, less restrained and less focused on strength and power. If the Room of Requirement existed, that would help loads in terms of finding a place to cultivate.

Severus Snape’s office was located in the dungeons, unsurprisingly. It was located in the main castle, unlike the dormitories. He had never needed to go, but he knew which way it was—all Slytherins were shown the way when they first joined—and so, from that single memory, Harry went.

The heels of his uniform leather shoes clicked against the marble floor, cold stone making the cold air even worse. Daphne, he mused, probably enjoyed it down here. It was more to her temperature than the unbearable heat outside. Unmoving portraits framed the corridor; their expressions were as stiff as the brick walls they hung upon. It seemed a bit silly now to have so many—their use once upon a time had been as eyes of the headmaster—but the little plaques beneath them dictating their names and years honored those forgotten.

Harry wondered if they were graduates, or perhaps people who had done good deeds for the school? Maybe a mix of both, like how Tom Riddle’s trophy had laid untouched in that room so long ago…

Why was it that his memories from that life continued to assault him? It was the only life he could recall without searching through the vaults in his head—well, aside from the most recent lives, that is.

He was usually very good at separating his lives and minds. The Master of Death always took a backseat when whoever he was at the time needed to live. Something about being Harry Potter again confused him, though not necessarily in a bad way.

Perhaps he had never truly settled his feelings from it all. He’d kept them locked up, stored away like a pack rat who didn’t understand what a garbage can was. Harry laughed, just a little, at the image he made of himself—and then stopped, because rats reminded him of another not-so-nice rat, who may or may not be involved with his parents’ death in this time.

 _Why can’t I just enjoy nice things_ , he thought, morose but steps undeterred.

Well, this was why he had Death. Many other people, many other _sane_ people, would rightfully assume Death was Not a Good Thing for them. Harry, ever the attention-seeking exception, naturally differed. Just the thought of his friend eased away his worries—at least for the moment—and brought him back to the matter at hand.

Snape. Yes, Snape. Cauldrons—not the cakes, the _real_ cauldrons. He was a tad peckish though, so maybe he could grab a bite to eat afterwards…from the kitchens, not the Great Hall. It was time to get serious, and he was easily distracted by people.

Harry knocked. That was what polite people did, he reminded himself, and he would be a polite person first before possibly becoming an ill-mannered heathen. It depended on what Snape saw him as this time around.

“Enter,” came the man’s voice, and so Harry did.

“Hullo, Professor Snape,” he greeted immediately upon entrance. If it was Tom he would’ve made an exaggerated bow, but for the sake of actual good impressions, he toned it down.

“Mr. Potter,” Severus drawled. “What can I do for you?”

Hm. Neutral tone, phrasing, expression…huh. Harry blinked. He wasn’t hated? He wasn’t hated. Was he really that lucky or was it too soon to tell?

Probably the latter.

Harry put on an assuming, if slightly nervous, smile as he approached the desk and its imposing occupant. He didn’t get too close—not only would Snape yell at him but he was overly short and the man was overly tall…which meant the desk was also _tall_. It made him feel better if the table top wasn’t bumping into his chest.

“Sorry for disturbing you, sir—” _always err on the side of caution_ , “—but I was wondering if you had any cauldrons available for students to borrow?”

Severus eyed him with impenetrable defenses. Harry could not see over the wall or through the wall—he was just glad it was a wall, and not a thousand arrows sent to pierce his mind. Legilimency was _not a thing_ in this world, thankfully, but he wouldn’t put it above Snape to cultivate a mind-reading technique. If those existed.

“Unfortunately, Mr. Potter, they are available only for students who are currently taking or have taken an Alchemy class,” Severus said in his usual sharp monotony.

“Oh,” Harry said. _Don’t push the matter, don’t push the matter._ “I understand. Thank you, sir, and sorry for the disruption. Excuse me.”

This time he did bow—though not so far at the waist and with such flourish as Tom would’ve gotten—before turning around to leave. When he was nearly at the door, the head of Slytherin house stopped him.

“Mr. Potter.”

Harry turned around. “Yes, sir?”

For a long while, Severus’ unreadable expression glared at him in the soft torchlight. It did not burn as fire would’ve, but Harry wasn’t sure there was much of a difference—it was not the gaze of an ally, or the gaze of a teacher to his student. Had he been a lesser human with weaker mental fortitude, perhaps Harry would’ve shook, or quaked, or broken and snapped. Instead, he stared forward almost expectantly, using all of his willpower to suppress the defiance that wanted to spring free.

He _hated_ when people looked at him that way. All of the villains he’d encountered in his lives had glared in similar variations of that look—the discerning, piercing, dissecting stare that put him on a petri dish in a cold, dead laboratory. He’d be put on a slide, burned under the artificial light of a microscope, cut into tiny pieces and then sewn together again. That’s what that look told him.

It was not a friendly look, nor was it—surprisingly, considering who the eyes belonged to—an antagonistic look. No, this was before he was _pain in the arse_ Hero or Savior or whoever they called him—this was when he was just in the wrong place, at the wrong time. He hadn’t been labeled yet, and so this was the probing stare that sought to do just that—label him.

Severus Snape did not know what to make of him, Harry realized. Unfortunately, Harry didn’t plan on that, because he didn’t know what he wanted the man to see either.

Finally, Severus asked, “Who were your parents?”

Harry Potter, Master of Death knew. This Harry Potter, however…

“I don’t know, sir,” he said, honest because in a manner he was.

“…You may go.” A clear dismissal.

“Please excuse me, then.”

* * *

Snape’s actions gave Harry more food for thought. Well, namely, questions—he had too many of those already, so really what were a few more?—like, did Snape even _know_ Lily and James in this universe? Because if so, wasn’t it obvious enough he was their son? He had Lily’s eyes and looked like a carbon copy of his father, supposedly. What was there to doubt?

Why had he asked in the first place?

…Unless, Harry really _wasn’t_ James and Lily’s son. Maybe James married someone else…or maybe he had an estranged brother, or something. The Potters were a pureblood family—woops, a _jianghu_ family—so it was possible his father was some other Potter, and maybe Lily was still his mother or maybe not.

No. One thing at a time. He wouldn’t figure out anything if he kept theorizing without any investigation, and like he was now...finding evidence was like a pipe dream. If Severus Snape didn’t know, how was _he_ , thirteen-year-old student with zero reliable connections, supposed to find out? Harry continued to lecture himself all the way to the seventh floor, right after he had decided to skip visiting Tom.

Two birds with one stone, was it? Well now he was going on three.

He couldn’t sense anything, and frankly Harry didn’t expect to. The Room of Requirement of his first life had been similarly well-hidden, and the only way to discover it had been either performing the proper entrance ritual or seeing someone _else_ use it. That had been how Umbridge had figured it out; if they’d been more careful, they might have even gotten away with it right under her nose.

Well, it didn’t hurt to try the old way. Harry walked back and forth three times, chanting in the privacy of his mind, _I need an alchemy lab with some space and privacy._

On the third time past, _like magic,_ a door appeared out of thin air. Harry let loose an excited whoop before darting in. As soon as he shut it behind him, the entrance disappeared from sight, leaving him completely alone in the wide space.

He hadn’t needed the ingredient shelves, but he supposed the Room was just being thorough. He’d asked for an _alchemy lab_ , after all. Aside from the obsessively neat arrangements of various flasks and jars—of which he hypothesized came from Snape’s own stock—there were three cauldrons placed in the middle of the room a good distance from one another. Work stations were set up beside them, and a wooden stirring stick was laid dead center on top of each of them.

Beneath his feet, he thought the stone floors looked a tad primitive, but he supposed for the sake of easy cleanup it was for the best. It was a cool room; not as cold as the dungeons, but cool enough. A plain old chandelier was strung above the cauldrons, and the light from it was just enough to properly illuminate the well-used part of the room, but nothing more. Harry dared not disturb the air too much, afraid if a single draft hit the fragile iron chain that it would snap and ruin his work area.

He trusted the Room of his first life more than this one. Until he was given proper assurance that everything was in working order, Harry decided against choosing the center cauldron and set up to its left instead.

This Storm Brewer method was unassuming at first, but not for long. To brew a storm in a cauldron, and then release it at will whenever he wanted? How could that not be formidable! Combined with interspacial rings, which would allow him near infinite storage if he carried enough of them, he could cook up however many disasters he wanted before an adventure and then draw them at his will. A hundred? A thousand? A million? _Why not_. It always paid to be prepared.

His inner devil was coming out to play now. Harry grinned. Of course he had to be careful because the storms would hurt him too, he wasn’t invulnerable after all, but causing chaos sounded like his style. Storms. Thunder. Chaos and confusion. It was all a smokescreen he could work under—turn his weak strength into something powerful.

With that thought, Harry began to cultivate. Half of his mind focused on learning the Thunderbird Stormcaller’s Storm Brewer method while the other half controlled his body. Drop by drop, he poured his soul energy into the cauldron and stirred accordingly. A tiny cloud began to form at the bottom, and as sweat dripped down his forehead and his hands grew hot, the cloud diffused and formed a thin layer of mist.

Harry played with it, trying to learn its ins and outs. He condensed it using the motions he learned—trial and error could reap great profits, and once he was more comfortable, he was able to glean very tiny insights into the method’s patterns—and let it diffuse again after. Soon enough the cloud moved according to his will; a snake charmer could control his snake no better than Harry and his clouds. He continued to fill the cauldron, making the tiny cotton puff plume into a miniature cumulonimbus.

Eventually his brew bubbled over; wispy mist vines curled over the brim and down the plump body of the cauldron. He now knew how to control the clouds, but creating a storm was an entirely different matter. Harry paused, taking deep heaving breaths when his single-minded focus grew unbearable. The thrumming pulse of his palms and fingers where he had gripped the stirring stick ached, and it was all due to the quality of the stick that he had blisters instead of splinters.

Getting this far in one session was satisfying, and for a moment Harry sat back and observed his work with so much pride that it, too was overflowing from the cauldron. Too much work would burn him out, so he settled and dismissed the cloud before entering a meditative state a way away on the floor. It was both to consolidate what he’d learned, and relax himself as his energy recuperated.

One hour, two hours, three hours passed before Harry opened his eyes again. He wasn’t fully recovered, but his mental state had taken a much needed rest and that, to him, was the important part. 

It would still be awhile until he could try again, since his next trial would be storm creation, so Harry took the time to search the room. The ingredients on the shelves he noticed before were actually labeled, though none of them sounded familiar from his past lives. Instead, he noticed a few that they’d learned about in his Agriculture class. Special grasses could be refined into pure soul force by cultivation—apparently their effectiveness could be increased through alchemy.

It was a shame he couldn’t take the class yet. Alchemists definitely held an important position in this world, but he was unable to learn about their craft due to his current immaturity. Maybe the Room could— _bingo._

Harry grinned. An unassuming bookshelf was tucked into a corner of the room. Well, he knew what he was doing for the next several hours…

Maybe he should just live here from now on?

* * *

“M-my lord,” a short, chubby man stuttered, “The boy—he lives!”

Said lord—a man with the exact opposite features of his subordinate; imposing where he cowered, tall when he was not, muscled in areas there was fat and conventionally handsome whereas the other lacked—finished his sip from his golden goblet before replying. He stared down into the rich, dark liquid, eyeing it with a distanced interest of a man who’d had better in his days.

“As he should, Peter,” the lord chided. “I spared him. Why indeed should he _not_ live?”

Despite his apparent lord’s calm and unshakable temper, Peter shook. It was as if the mere chance that his lord was irritated would beckon punishment, and though the door was just behind him, he was trapped and cornered simply by being in the presence of this man. Had his lord looked at him, Peter was sure he would’ve died, for nothing escaped divinity and he was quite sure a god’s blood ran through his lord’s veins.

“N-no, my lord,” Peter whispered, and then flinched instinctively after. When no blow came, he continued. “He _lives_ —here, in the _jianghu_!”

Silence. Peter squeezed his eyes shut, curling in on himself much like an animal would. Someone had to be punished for this grievous oversight, he knew, and there was no one else here but him. Yet, the news had to be delivered. He could not hide it. It would reach his lord eventually, and if his lord heard from a mouth not his own…

Peter shook. He didn’t want to imagine such a thing.

“Oh?” his lord said, soft as a feather with the weight of a bomb. “Is he, now?”

Panicked, Peter exclaimed, “He’s at Hogwarts! Hogwarts, my lord! R-Riddle has taken him in as a disciple.”

“He cannot stay there forever,” remarked his lord. “Eventually, the boy will leave. You will tell me when he does—keep an eye on him.”

“O-of course, my lord! Your humble servant will do as you command!” Peter squeaked. “My lord, when he leaves…?”

His lord took another sip from his goblet. “My mercy spared him before—no, perhaps it was my good will? He absolved my curiosity once, after all. Now that such a curious thing has occurred…I wonder.”

There was a brief pause as Peter fidgeted while he waited. Then, as his lord always did, he announced—quite suddenly but with all the majesty his other words had—“The boy is mine. Once he leaves his nest, you will bring him to me, Peter.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI YES I'M ALIVE.
> 
> I accidentally took a wrong turn and ended up in spideypool hell for awhile. Fortunately it is a small (but very, very deep) hole that I don't feel particularly inclined to write for. ffs I haven't watched a Marvel movie in my life but WHO WOULDVE GUESSED Peter Parker is my fiction type. Cinnamon roll with fluffy hair. And Deadpool is just adorable like
> 
> ugh. talk to me about this if you understand
> 
> I feel like one of those relatives that just goes away for awhile with no given reason and then comes back with novelty magnets, a cool hat, and weird candies that are quickly passed off to the kids (who are warned not to eat it). Um. Point is, I feel like (compared to other authors) I don't treat you guys very well. Sorry. If you guys want some sort of progress thing, I could try that. Otherwise, if you're totally ok with how things are, thanksヾ(´▽｀;)ゝ


	6. Chapter 6

It had been awhile since Harry had worked with a cauldron. In some of the worlds he’d been to, they had used natural landscapes instead—ponds and springs, tide pools or even a volcano’s caldera. Other times, he had used containers made from clay or crystal, all of varying shapes and sizes. They had been a far cry from a witch’s cauldron.

Still, it was good to be working with familiarity again, even if the subject matter wasn’t familiar at all. Harry sighed, wiping at his sweat-damp forehead with the back of his sleeve. Not all of it was from exertion—storm brewing was manipulating energy, and energy was, if nothing else, hot. Being so near, he couldn’t escape the heat of the cauldron, even if the Room seemed well equipped to controlling the temperature.

After repeated trial-and-error—and liberal amounts of breaks—he had finally completed his first batch. Harry took a deep breath before blowing on the thinning mist. It parted like the folds of a flower, unveiling two glowing crystals nestled at the bottom. He waited for a moment more for the mist to completely clear before reaching in.

As it turned out, storm brewing had similarities to pill making. He learned from the books that to make a pill, one first had to brew its potion form. A pill was actually a potion condensed using soul energy; it was smaller, more effective, and also _expensive_. In the same respect, Harry had been able to make storms inside the cauldron, which were perfectly fine, but he needed more soul energy to shrink it down into something usable.

They were about the size of a galleon, nestled in his equally small hands, and warm to the touch. Harry instantly knew it would be a bad idea to store more than a few of these like he had originally planned. The energy whirling inside of them was unstable and could be released through the slightest disturbance—too dangerous, these were far too dangerous to carry more of.

At max, he would only dare to carry three—five if he ever got an interspacial ring to store them. The last thing Harry wanted to do was set off a chain reaction. Perhaps if he figured out how to stabilize them, then he could get around to carrying an upwards number of fifty or more. For now, single digits would have to do.

The crystal itself seemed to be opaque, like foggy glass. Inside it, some equally murky viscous fluid shifted like lava. Its glow was dim, but occasionally there would be a blink of light somewhere within its depths. In all honesty, Harry thought it looked rather ugly, but he wasn’t one to judge a book by its cover. It would need to be tested first.

How big would the effects be? This was his first result, so it couldn’t be very strong.

Harry gently took one of them in his other hand. He held it with the tips of his fingers, turning it this way and that in a manner that wouldn’t disturb it too much. The glowing liquid inside turned, but otherwise did not reveal anything else.

Ten hours of hard work. Time to see if it paid off.

He injected the slightest amount of his soul energy into the crystal—just enough to cause a reaction—and dropped it back into the cauldron. Maybe he should’ve stepped back for good measure, but he wanted to get a close look at the results. Rather than an experiment, Harry looked at the crystal as if it were a newborn child, about to take its first steps.

Whatever he expected, the effect was not instantaneous. First, a crack formed in the crystal. Then, from beneath it, the viscous fluid bubbled up and spilled out. Upon hitting the air, it seemed to evaporate, and a familiar misty steam began to build. From there it was faster—as if once the liquid storm had tasted the outside world, it hungered for more. Up and up and up the clouds grew, puffing in small mushroom heads as the crystal emptied.

Soon, he could not see the crystal at all. And that was about when Harry realized he should really take that step back now.

He did—just in time. The clouds quickly spilled up and out over the cauldron, only this time they did not dissipate like harmless mist. They remained floating dark and hungry over the ground, and Harry skittered backwards to avoid getting them over his pants and shoes. If he strained his ears, he could hear a small rumbling sound, like distant thunder…

From within the cauldron, snakes of lightning slithered forth along the cloud path. They were hot and white like molten gold, flashing before reappearing elsewhere, and the part of him that was not consumed by utter fascination wondered if he should get the hell out of here.

Fortunately, there did not seem to be enough energy for the clouds to spread further. The small area they encompassed rung a halo that reached the other workstation, but since nothing caught fire, Harry supposed it was fine.

He could barely see the cauldron anymore; covered in the jungle of storm clouds, he could discern nothing else but its shape, and perhaps its outline when lightning sparked atop its rim.

Harry had done a countless number of more fantastical, magical things in his life, but he still watched the results of his labor in childish awe. Here he sat, devoid of the magic he knew, and yet with the potential to control a whole _other_ sort of energy with undefined rules and mysteries… He’d probably never get over that rush.

And then he asked the question that had the McGonagall of his first life cursing the Marauders, that Dumbledore urged with his twinkling eyes and sealed lips, that Hermione probed and sometimes embraced, sometimes rejected. It was the question Ron would’ve said with a breathless, “Wicked,” and a loose jaw. The twins would’ve cackled, faces lit up in childish glee, as opposed to the Dursleys who would’ve reeled back in horror.

“What more can this do?”

Rather, how _big_ could he make it? He’d turned a pot of storm into a tiny, coin-sized crystal, and that crystal had turned into a storm that overfilled that same pot. He was sure this was also a visualization of pills! While he _could_ get a bigger cauldron and make a bigger storm, he hypothesized that, if he maximized efficiency and chiseled down the rough edges, he could make bigger storms utilizing the same tools. This was his first trial; of course there would be imperfections to fix!

This couldn’t be the limit of this skill. Could he make it span a wide, open field? Spread it over the range of Hogwarts? Could he control whether the clouds laid on the ground or spread up into the skies? He _could_. Experience said he could. Now he just had to figure out how.

* * *

Cultivation was…interesting, to say the least. Knowledge and learning came from within. Discoveries were made predominantly by the self. Harry actually preferred this method—sometimes, his only option in a world had been to learn from books, putting his life in the hands of the author. They could be biased, misinformed, skim details or become outdated, and he who had just entered the world wouldn’t be able to tell right from wrong.

On the other hand, he was now in Hogwarts, a famous school in his first life turned a prestigious school in this new life. Secondly, he had been taken under the wing of a renowned expert—it being Tom Riddle deserved a snort and a giggle—who had provided him adequate resources for his first steps. There was a library in reach, a secret room he could practice in…

Yes, despite owning nothing, Harry considered himself incredibly well-off this life.

A week had calmly passed by since his last encounter with Daphne Greengrass and his first foray into the Thunderbird Stormcaller Technique. Since then, he had successfully created several batches of crystals—Harry decided to name them “storm eggs”; he _had_ laid them, in a way—each better than the last.

He hadn’t yet figured out how to stabilize them, but he was sure there was a way. At the moment, he carried one large and two smaller storm eggs. He’d been able to figure out how to manipulate the size, but it usually effected the entire batch.

Now that he was adequately set on that path, Harry decided to use his next three-hour session to learn the Lightning Rod method. He figured a firm grasp of these two skills would open the doors to more secrets of the Thunderbird Stormcaller Technique. It certainly sounded like it—if this technique revolved around the usage of lightning, the first step would obviously be handling lightning!

While lightning was not considered a ‘pure’ element—that was, fire, water, air, earth, dark, or light—it usually fell close to fire. The majority of techniques that handled lightning were fire, and to some extent light. A lightning technique that was compatible with earth was unheard of, and water was similarly rare. Thus, Harry considered his arrow had hit close enough to the bullseye to be satisfied. Several arrows could hit a heart; shooting it dead center or slightly to the left was still hitting it.

Things started out fine. Harry fell into his meditative state, exploring the ideas the Lightning Rod method presented him. He managed to summon a small spark of electricity between his index finger and thumb before disaster struck, almost literally.

He’d been trying to increase the amount of electricity when a burning ache began, right at his shoulder. Harry initially shook it off, but it grew and grew and grew until it was eating away at his flesh, traveling down his arm all the way to his elbow, wrist, and hand. When it felt like he’d dunked his arm into the heart of a volcano and coated it with the surface of the sun, that was it. He immediately stopped circulating his soul energy, but by that point it was too late.

Something was burning. There was _smoke_ , ozone, or at least the tainted smell of it. Harry pulled up his sleeve and saw that his arm was completely red—the angry flush evident of a nasty burn. On the underside of his arm was a white hot lightning bolt whose branches stretched from his wrist to up back beneath the cloth, and if his body wasn’t screaming in pain and demanding he cut his arm off _right now_ , then maybe he would’ve rolled his sleeve up further to stare at it.

Well, never mind that. Harry stood up, unruffled by his wound, and headed for the door. He needed to get to the Hospital Wing immediately; who knew what this burn was but nothing about it was natural. Before exiting, he hesitated. If people saw his wound, they’d ask about it, but it was a capital ‘b’ Bad idea to roll his sleeve back down.

The idea of something touching his burn besides an ice pack or some freezing cold water made him grimace, but the idea of someone stopping him and asking questions was even worse. Cultivation wasn’t a secret, but _what he was cultivating_ definitely was.

So, against his better judgement, Harry rolled his sleeve back down—at least they were loose, good lord—and walked out, bidding farewell to the rest of his timeslot. The walk to the Hospital Wing was agony as he tried to appear normal while still babying his screeching arm. If he hadn’t had injuries far worse than this, no doubt he wouldn’t even be moving. Someone would have to drag his body out from the cultivation room.

Unfortunately, _this body_ wasn’t accustomed to pain quite yet, which made it a thousand times worse. In his astral body, his entire body could be covered by wounds like this, swords stabbed into his chest and a leg cut off, and sure that would slow him down—sort of hard to walk with one leg—but he’d still be up for a fight. His regeneration rate would fix him up in about twenty-four hours, faster if he died. Now? _Now_ every step he took felt like it took a thousand years, and if he tried to focus on something other than the ground and his feet, he was sure he’d either vomit or pass out.

The burn wasn’t getting better or even staying the same—it was getting _worse_.

Just when Hogwarts’ doors came in sight, Daphne Greengrass walked out of them. Her head was ducked low, with her two shoulders acting as mountains to shade her face. Actually… Harry paused. She was crying.

His first reaction was that he didn’t have anything to do with it, and getting to the Hospital Wing was more important. His observation, however, proved that would be difficult—Daphne was standing in front of the doors. It would be impossible to get around her without being noticed, and the next entrance to the castle was too far away to be viable.

While a time-consuming confrontation wouldn’t be ideal, the other choices looked equally bland. The best case scenario was they both pretended they hadn’t seen each other—the likelihood of that happening, on the other hand, was near zero.

“What are _you_ doing here?” Greengrass sniffed, trying to frantically rub the tears from her eyes. From experience, Harry knew that wouldn’t work; perhaps at the end when she was all cried out, but that was not now.

Harry motioned to the entrance behind her. “Just leaving,” he said vaguely.

She sniffled again, and Harry felt his heart soften. He was weak against tears—and Daphne, who had been so ornery every time he’d seen her, was surprisingly demure now that her perfect appearance had been ruined by herself. Snot dribbled down her nose, dry tear tracks were quickly rehydrated; her eyes ached red and she was just so small.

Any one of his past children could tell how quickly Harry bent to a crying face. Crocodile tears were another matter, but genuine, bonafide, heart-sent tears were difficult to ignore.

Greengrass hadn’t exactly been listening to his answer. Her head twisted away as if to hide behind a curtain of her hair, but it was a crude sham of a shelter if any. Harry muffled a sigh. He walked forward with the intent of giving her a wide berth—and getting through the doors, of course—but she stopped him with a muttered curse.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

He wasn’t trying to.

“You’ve got all the _luck_ ,” Daphne continued, her face angled away. “You’ve got nothing to worry about; the world just fell right into your lap.”

“The grass is always greener on the other side,” he told her softly. “You look rather lucky, too, you know?”

“Luck? _Luck_?” her voice died out, weak as a baby bird. “Bad luck, maybe. There’s no good luck involved being the Greengrass heir. There’s no good luck involved choking on pill after pill…for what? ‘Bring honor to your family, Daphne.’” She sobbed. “‘You have to pave the path for your sister, Daphne.’ I’d rather be born without a reason than be born for this one— _an investment_. Not a daughter. Not a child. _An investment._ ”

Though his arm continued to remind him that he needed to go and he needed to go now, Harry did not move again. “Your family sucks,” he told her frankly.

“Yeah, no kidding,” she mumbled into her hands. “Sometimes, I just wish—I just wish I didn’t have a family—”

Something lodged itself in Harry’s throat. Parents were a funny thing. They received a title of their own, and that may’ve fooled people into generalizing them…but parents were people, and people could do bad things. Horrible, terrible things. He’d lived those lives, and he’d lived the lives with perfect parents as well. All he could do was cast them away. Daphne didn’t have the luxury of a million lives for it.

“Would you rather be me?”

Daphne’s head snapped up, revealing the red of her eyes and the tears that welled at their edges. Some were still dribbling down her cheeks. “I— _well_ —”

Harry smiled.

“You should not wish it. Life is too short to waste forever wishing. Rather live the life you have now, shaping it into the one you believe you deserve, than coveting another’s,” he told her. And then, taking advantage of her bewilderment, he hightailed it out of there before she could regain her wits. On the way, he brushed right past her; though he never came in contact with her, Harry could’ve sworn he felt a brief chill settle like an icepack to the arm before it burned even stronger. 

The Hospital Wing grew more attractive by the second.

* * *

Harry miraculously made it to the Hospital Wing without further incident.

When the nurse sat him down and took a look at his arm, her horrified face made him a feel a tiny bit guilty. He couldn’t tell her how he’d gotten the wound—didn’t know much about it himself—so all he could do is sit and listen to her scold him while she cleaned it.

Mid-lecture, the door opened.

“Grand Master Riddle,” Pomfrey greeted curtly, only managing a small bow before she turned back to Harry’s burn.

Harry was not so unshaken. “Master?” he blurted. What was Tom Riddle doing in the _Hospital Wing_?

He was staring. At him.

“I’ll be taking him from here, Madam Pomfrey,” Riddle said.

The nurse looked up. “With all due respect, Grand Master Riddle, this is a serious injury that needs to be taken care of.”

“And it will.”

He obeyed when Riddle beckoned. Harry followed him down the hall, trying to ignore the pain of his arm and not quite fully succeeding. Either Riddle was walking slower than normal or he was actually doing a pretty good job—Harry wasn’t sure.

“Your arm,” Tom began, now that they were decently far from the Hospital Wing, “You’ll be fine for a little while longer?”

It wasn’t exactly a question, nor was it quite a command. Harry, confused, settled on humor to solve his problems. “If that’s what Master wishes.”         

Tom was unamused. “What your master wishes to know, he will make known to you.” There was an unspoken _don’t make me repeat myself_ tacked onto the end.

“…I’ll be fine, yes.”                                              

Riddle nodded. Eventually they reached their destination, and a portrait door swung open to reveal a study-like room…from what Harry could see, anyway. Curtains covered the windows so the lighting was dim. Tom motioned him to a plush armchair, which Harry immediately occupied and settled down in. It would’ve been more comfortable had he not been trying to baby his arm, but he took what he could get.

Tom did not speak. In fact, he didn’t look as if he wanted to make conversation at all, so Harry decided the best use of his time would be cultivating instead. He’d been in the middle of it anyway, and he was still a little miffed that his precious timeslot had to be abandoned. There was only one session available per week for practitioners of his level, and now it was all used up even though he didn’t finish the three hours.

There was the Room of Requirement to consider, but Harry felt uneasy using the Room for too many things. Renters of the cultivation rooms were all recorded into an attendance book. As long as Harry had records of his appearance _somewhere_ , even if it was only once a week, it was unlikely someone would get too suspicious of where he went.

Well, putting that aside, Riddle’s study was also a suitable replacement. Like the cultivation rooms, it must’ve been soundproofed somehow because it was entirely silent. Not even the sound of the wind brushing against the windows could be heard. The atmosphere he felt also wasn’t suffocating—it wasn’t too comfortable, but it wasn’t oppressing either.

The armchair he was on was less than ideal, but Harry could manage that.

He wouldn’t attempt the Lightning Rod method yet—that would be plain stupid—but he could still search for general insights between his elements and the Thunderbird Stormcaller Technique. With that thought in mind, Harry fell into a light meditative trance, completely ignoring the other person in the room.

“…You’re actually cultivating?”

Harry opened his eyes. “Um, yes? Sir.” There was an unspoken, ‘ _aren’t I supposed to?’_ tacked onto the end.

Tom looked exasperated, or a little frustrated evident by his sigh. “Don’t you have anything to tell me?”

Harry frowned. “No...”

“About the girl.”

His first question was, ‘ _What girl?’_ but the only possibly relevant one (even if he didn’t know by how) was Daphne. Their last confrontation had been a significant time ago though—if Tom had wanted to say something about that, wouldn’t he have already said it before? Or had he been busy… “Master, I don’t understand,” he declared.

Now Tom was the one frowning. “Your arm. Doesn’t it hurt?”

Understatement of the century. Still, Harry nodded along as if it didn’t. “Yes, of course.”

“Harry, your master isn’t blind. Daphne Greengrass’ aura is coating that arm.”

He would’ve fallen out of his seat had he not been leaning back so far. “Master thinks _Greengrass_ is the one to do this? No, no no no, sect sister wouldn’t!” Tom gave him a flat look. Harry amended, “Well, she couldn’t.”

“This is true,” his master agreed. “Naturally, your master isn’t foolish…but the fact remains. I wonder if you will defend her…?”

By now, Harry was well and truly confused. His last physical confrontation with Daphne was when she’d pushed him, but that couldn’t possibly have something to do with his arm. He assumed it had something to do with the Lightning Rod method, or his cultivation time in that room. Otherwise, when he’d seen Greengrass in front of Hogwarts…well, how could that have done something?

“I walked past her,” Harry explained, wishing to shed a little light for both of them. “Earlier, on the way to the Hospital Wing. She didn’t touch me though—so I really don’t understand what you’re saying, Master.”

“Ah,” Tom said, and then he stood. Harry watched as he rummaged through one of his drawers and removed a small glass bottle, which he unceremoniously tossed to him. He caught it with all the ease of his original seeker reflexes—with his good arm, of course.

“This is…the Revolving Heavens Recovery Pill?!”

“So you even know what that is.”

Harry smiled a little sheepishly. “Your disciple has recently taken an interest in pills…?”

Tom allowed it. “Hmm. It’s for your arm.”

If he’d been drinking something, Harry would’ve spit it right out. “Surely it isn’t that bad of an injury?! Master, this pill is worth _fifty times my arm_ , at least! Well, in the _yamen_ ’s black market price—”

“You think your master can’t afford to provide for his disciples?”

Harry backtracked. “Master is a benevolent soul—”

Tom chuckled. “The actual wound is a little worse now, but it isn’t something a little good pill can’t take care of. The problem lies in the nature of your wound—soul energy applied to it will exacerbate it, even if that soul energy is meant to heal.”

“That sounds bad…” Harry murmured, taking another look at the sole pill in the bottle.

“Naturally, the Revolving Heavens Recovery Pill is a top tier recovery pill. It won’t be deterred by a small troublesome property. Go ahead and refine it. Your master is not a poor man.”

He still had another question. “Master, about sect sister…?”

“Ah, yes. The Greengrass girl,” Tom stated, and he wondered at how cold it sounded to his ears. Either Tom was acting with him, or the difference between he and her was truly quite large in the Grand Master’s opinion. “I had assumed the tension between you and her would result in a clash, the reason why the state of your arm worsened… As it turns out, it was this matter.”

“‘This matter’?”

“Her situation with her family is deplorable, but unsurprising in the _jianghu_ ,” said Tom, using his own lack of care to report everything in a clinical fashion. “Desperate families are a dime a dozen, here. If a family lacks a powerful expert, or upcoming expert, they are considered ‘in danger.’ They think as long as they can get one child to ascend, the ends justify the means. Their desperation breeds toxicity.”

Harry lowered his eyes. “That’s terrible.”

“It is,” his master agreed. “The children that come out of this environment, whether the parents are successful or not, are stunted in other ways. Sometimes, the luckiest of them only come out with a personality deficiency. Other times it directly affects their mental state, their cultivation. Daphne Greengrass, for example, struggles to control her soul energy because it was developed too hastily. It manifests in the ice element, for which she has an inclination for.”

He remembered the chill he felt in his arm when walking past her. “So she emits it when emotionally distressed?”

“Correct,” Tom replied simply.

Her family really did suck. Harry’s grip on the pill bottle tightened. “I don’t know how to use pills,” he said.

“We _refine_ pills in the _jianghu_ ,” Tom corrected, though his tone was far softer than previously. Harry waited as he walked over and gently took the bottle out of his hands. One smooth twist opened it, and he poured the contents into Harry’s cupped hands.

It was roughly the size of a notch of his finger, completely spherical, and covered in a small misty glow. That was the mark of a high quality pill: its shine. Another mark was how clear it was; the Revolving Heavens Recovery Pill appeared to have no impurities at all, or at least a negligible amount to have such a pure color.

 “You swallow it dry first,” Tom instructed.

Harry did so, but when it was about to slide down his throat, the pill disappeared! He touched the place it should’ve been. “It’s gone.”

Tom nodded. “It appears in your soul sea. You are aware what that is and how to reach it, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Your goal is to dissolve it. That is what we call ‘refining’—dissolving the pill so the soul energy can be absorbed into your soul realm. The more you are able to refine, the more effective the pill is. It will also dissolve with time, but the effects of that is near trivial compared to active refinement. Time will also not dissolve it completely, so it is considered a waste to consume without refining. In this case, high quality pills will have more soul energy and less impurities, so it’ll be good practice for you.”

Harry didn’t know what to say. Wasn’t using a ridiculously expensive pill as ‘practice’ also frivolous? Nevertheless…

At first, refining was difficult. The pill easily broke into chunks, but that left most of it unused. Instead, Harry imagined it was being eroded by his soul sea—the tumbling and the currents broke it further into gravel chunks, and all the way down to sand-sized grains. Then, he felt he could dissolve it no further.

He thought of the debris from this pill being reformed as a new rock, which would also be eroded away with time. Eventually the grains were as small as silt, and then with more effort and concentration, clay. He felt his soul sea eat the fine dusting of powder like a starving man.

When Harry resurfaced, the first thing he noticed was the pain in his arm was all gone. Secondly, Tom was no longer standing next to him—he was seated at his desk, writing something.

“Check your arm,” his master told him.

It was completely healed. Not a blemish remained, not even a light redness or scarring. Even the lightning bolt was gone. Harry openly gaped. High quality pill indeed! Perhaps it could even heal curse scars with this power.

“That wound,” Tom said, setting aside his quill, “How did you get it?”

“I thought Master would know,” Harry replied. “Your disciple can only guess that he received it while cultivating the Lightning Rod method of the Thunderbird Stormcaller Technique. Practicing the Storm Brewer method does not result in the same effect.”

“There are some cultivation techniques whose methods put the cultivator through physical trial…but none I know of that would create a wound like that,” Tom said, slowly picking up speed. “It would seem counterproductive to cause a wound that exacerbates with applied soul energy, but the signature is indeed unmistakable. Evidence says that outside the Greengrass girl’s interference, it was a self-inflicted wound—or it wasn’t completely, but there wasn’t a signature for that…”

Harry waited. Tom seemed to come to a conclusion, for he abruptly stood, rattling his ink bottle when his robe sleeves brushed past it. “For now…your master will not tell you to stop cultivating that method, but if you are injured again, come immediately to my office instead of the Hospital Wing. They will not be able to treat it. I also expect you know how to refrain yourself from doing too much damage.”

“Much thanks, Master!”

* * *

The next time Harry ran into Daphne, _she_ was staring at him first. Harry blinked and, after a moment’s pause, raised his hand in greeting. “Morning, sister—”

Before he could even finish, Daphne had marched up to him and grabbed him by the front of his _gi_. “Listen up, Dead Wall,” she hissed. “If you tell _anyone_ what happened the other day, don’t dream of living after Hogwarts!”

There was a pause as she waited for his acknowledgement, characterized only by her heavy breath assaulting his steady rhythm.

Harry gave her an indulgent smile. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Greengrass released him. “And don’t call me sister,” she spat, spinning around to leave. So she had searched him out for this matter. No wonder they had ‘run into’ each other so soon. Well, he wasn’t one to hit someone while they were down; that was just rude. That aside—

He’d gone from ‘trash’ to ‘Dead Wall’…was that supposed to be considered an improvement…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello i'm alive yes
> 
> I'm trying to use as many of my favorite tropes as I can while still making this a serious fic. Unfortunately I need some groundwork before I can get to the parts I like the most....starting out a fic is hard......
> 
> (not like i can ever get one off the ground anyway ./isshot)
> 
> Recently I read _A Mistaken Marriage Match: Generation of Military Counselor_ (weird name I know), and I really liked it. It had a wuxia-vibe (martial arts) without being a classic wuxia. It has a strong female lead, though she is a little denser than I like. I would highly recommend it! Unfortunately, it's only 24 chapters out of 40-something translated...but I still thought it was enjoyable. There were enough arcs to get a good feel for the story. If you're looking for something to read, why not try it?
> 
>  **Edit** : I changed some tags to be more accurate.


	7. Chapter 7

Two was hardly a proper sample size, but as it came at the risk of his health, Harry chose to believe it wasn’t coincidence.

After receiving the same type of wound upon cultivating the Lightning Rod method, Harry decided to drop it until further investigation. The problem was, he was now stuck—the Storm Brewer method, while it had potential, was situational if he didn’t want to destroy the environment as well. Going into either the Black Lake or Forbidden Forest was out of the question with only storm eggs for defense, and by proxy, going to the Firestone Caverns was also impossible with his current strength.

What to do…

Ah! The answer was in front of him the whole time. He still had his elements, which he knew had been nurtured well by the Storm Brewer method. First, he would try the beginner elemental spells and expand his repertoire from there.

There was a matter of a private training room, but the Room of Requirement solved that easily.

Spells were ranked using a star system. Each third of the beginner, intermediate, and advanced martial ranks corresponded to a star, for a maximum of nine stars between elementary and advanced ranks. For spells beyond advanced rank, they did have different skill levels, but no longer used the star system.

Harry flippantly took a random book out of the stack. This one in particular focused on fire spells, the very first of which was a simple 1* Fireball. He wasn’t so foolish to think a 1* Fireball cast by a 1st rank elementary practitioner was the same one cast by a 1st rank intermediary practitioner, but everyone had to start from somewhere.

Rather carelessly, Harry selected a training dummy and intoned, “Fireball.” Immediately from his palm swept a ball of fire, which hit the dummy right on the chest.

He expected it to be rather intuitive, but he didn’t expect it to be that easy! The elements had moved as if their sole wish was to follow him. His fire element had condensed into his hand and materialized as smoothly as drinking a glass of water. Even Harry had to admit that was ridiculous; nothing done for the first time was meant to be that easy.

“Let’s try another one.”

He flipped forward past the details on 1* Fireball and found 1* Fire Ring, which according to the notes was of a higher difficulty than the former. That suited Harry’s needs just fine, so he raised his hand again and intoned, “Fire Ring.”

Again, just as easily as Fireball, flames burst from his hand and collided with the training dummy. Instead of a ball of fire, it had been a small circle instead, and indeed a small imprint was left on the dummy before it faded away.

Still too easy. Harry frowned. He needed to find what his body’s maximum capabilities were. Instead of continuing to the next spell in the book, he chose instead to test the control he had over the two spells he’d learned (in the loosest manner possible). Sometimes, control was even more important than power. If he didn’t have an equal balance of both, things could go poorly for him—especially in the violent nature of the _jianghu_.

“Fire Ring!”

Harry made the ring bigger, he made the ring smaller. He changed its angle, its direction, even its shape. Then he decided, what makes 1* Fire Ring so different from a 1* Fireball? They both came from his palm, both had about the same size if he manipulated them properly…

He turned back to the book and skimmed a few lines. Fire Ring, the book said, could be raised from the ground as well as act as a ranged missile. Beginners usually found the latter easier to master due to its shared attributes with Fireball—

There it was. Harry tried again, not putting in any more effort than his last attempts. A ring of fire easily sprang to life surrounding the training dummy. That could have its uses, so Harry spent a little time testing his control with that as well—he made it bigger, made it smaller, changed the nature of its initial appearance (drawn or raised from the ground), increased the perimeter, and again changed its size.

If learning elemental spells was really so easy, no one would need a book detailing roughly a chapter per 1* fire spell. Naturally, Harry was suspicious. He skipped forward until he reached the 2* spells, which theoretically he should not be able to cast.

2* Fire Arrow had a higher accuracy and power than 1* Fireball. It could be cast by either materializing the arrows in the air or from a bow formed of fire, as some archers would prefer. The former was more difficult than the latter because the difference between casting from the body versus casting from a distance was like walking down a sidewalk versus running in the street during traffic, dodging cars left and right.

It could be done, but required a higher level of concentration, and if it was disrupted by an opponent, then it would fail.

“Fire Arrow!”

Finally, Harry began to feel a little strain. It was still easy, but there was more resistance when he casted it. The next time, he tried to materialize an arrow in mid-air. The result was slower than his first try, but the result was ultimately no different.

Next, he practiced control. How fast was it? Did it spin? Did its path curve like a real arrow, or was it straight like a fireball? In the end, he found that one arrow was no problem for him, so like the book mentioned, he tried to simultaneously materialize more.

He reached three arrows max until the time and concentration it took to materialize the fourth became impractical. Then he went through the motions of controlling these three arrows individually, sending them in different directions and at different targets at the same time. Only when he was moderately satisfied did he stop.

Sweat had accumulated on his forehead. Even his breath was a bit heavier. Still, even this was odd! Harry knew he shouldn’t have been able to cast 2* Fire Arrow at all, never mind three of them at the same time. Even a one-star difference was a large gap. 2* spells were usually cast by 4th rank elementary practitioners and up—and where was Harry? 1st rank, period.

Any of his instructors would’ve fainted at the sight and declared they were dreaming. What practitioner could skip forward three ranks so casually and so thoroughly? 2* Fire Arrow was at the bottom of 2* fire spells, true, but he had controlled _three_ of them.

Could this possibly be an isolated incident, as in it was only the fire element? Harry knew he had to test. He placed the fire spell book aside and drew another beginner elemental textbook at random—though of course it couldn’t be earth.

First, just like before, he started out with the most basic 1* wind spell, Levitate, and again when it proved too easy, Harry tried a 2* wind spell, Wind Blade.

He met with no more resistance than he had with the 2* Fire Arrow. Harry frowned, and tried again while multiplying the number of blades per cast. He reached four before the fifth one proved impractical.

A possible explanation for the difference of one was that fire arrows had a defined shape to them: arrows. Blades, on the other hand, took less thought—they were mere crescent arcs of wind. However, the blades were more difficult to control than the arrows, as the blades moved at higher speeds.

Harry continued his tests with water, light, and dark, and the results were roughly the same. He was not able to cast beyond the brink of 2* spells, but his standard for a cast was that they would be practical to use, so in fact this was still very impressive. Now that he had suitably expanded his repertoire, Harry wanted to get to the bottom of his weird proficiency levels.

To find his answers, he fell into a meditative trance and sought out his soul sea. By the end of the hour, he’d come across a great discovery—it could quite possibly explain everything.

There was an imbalance between his elements and body, the two of which contributed to his soul. In order to break through during the beginning elementary ranks, all that was required was training both of them. No epiphanies or philosophical understanding was required; simply continued practice would waltz a Hogwarts student into the next rank.

The Storm Brewer method had done even better than he first thought at nurturing his elements. They all singlehandedly filled the requirement to breakthrough for him and some; the problem was his body. The gap between his elements and his physical body’s condition was too large, so instead of breaking through to 2nd rank, he had merely remained at 1st rank.

Harry remembered what Tom had mentioned. Some cultivation techniques had methods that put the body through trial. It was just a vague guess, but Harry wondered if his Lightning Rod method required a higher rank to properly cultivate—his body’s condition could be too weak to handle it.

In that case, he needed to step up his physical training. Who knew the Storm Brewer method was such a cheat; his elements had practically gorged themselves cultivating. If he broke through to 2nd rank, would he be able to cast more 2* spells? Even that was possible.

Physical training classes were naturally offered at Hogwarts. Harry chose to begin attending those again because they offered use of the facilities and the instruction was fairly loose. Like the cultivation rooms, the special physical training facilities were based on time slots—only the most basic gym could be used at any time by any student. He would supplement his lessons with time there, as well as on his own around the campus.

Mixed with cultivation—which did train his body, but he had five elements versus one of those—Harry broke through to 2nd rank in two weeks. He broke through to 3rd rank in five days.

* * *

Harry wouldn’t say he was impatient to go to an unsupervised training area, but he was a little impatient to go to an unsupervised training area. Going didn’t necessarily equate to exploring the entire region of course; the Black Lake, Forbidden Forest, and Firestone Caverns all covered a wide range of land and martial ranks. It was unwise and dangerous to go too early, but many 4th rank elementary practitioners trained along the outer edges.

Merely chasing after strength would not give his body the proper reflexes that fighting would. Harry needed it less than others, but for that exact same reason did he know it was necessary. No matter how sharp the mind was, the body would be clumsy if not nurtured well.

At the very least, Harry wanted to try cultivating the Lightning Rod method one more time before heading off.

Inside the cultivation room, his arm twitched at the memory of its previous injuries. The second time had not been as worse as the first—he’d learned his lesson and remembered the signs—but it had still required Tom’s Revolving Heavens Recovery Pill. He was still bitter about that, but refined it thoroughly so it wouldn’t go to waste.

This time, he watched the electricity carefully as it sparked between his fingers. With a flex of his hand, it sparked, growing in a few blinks before shrinking again like an elastic band. As he played with it, Harry kept an eye on the state of his arm. The resistance he felt during his elemental training was useful, for he felt a heavy layering of it here.

So his first hypothesis was right. He wasn’t strong enough to cultivate the Lightning Rod method thoroughly yet. Because it would still be good to know how far he could push himself, Harry continued his experiment. He managed to juggle the electric spark between his two hands before a warning built up in his shoulders. At that, he stopped.

Harry had no intention of eating another Revolving Heavens Recovery Pill, thanks.

It was still a troubling matter even after he found a source for the wound. The Lightning Rod method was one of the basic foundational methods for the Thunderbird Stormcaller Technique—if he couldn’t cultivate it at the 3rd rank, exactly how advanced were the other methods, or the technique in general?

Strengthening himself would take time. This, he already knew, especially because the time scale for this world took into account drastically increased life spans for martial artists. But with the matter with Death, Harry felt uncomfortable if he didn’t have some means to defend himself; he might have to look into other avenues if this learning curve persisted.

Though he did have a building repertoire of elemental spells, so Harry figured he could go now if he liked. But for the future, it was not good to rely on spells—a point made in the more in-depth textbooks he perused.

Magic did not exist in this world, well and truly. ‘Spells,’ then, was a misnomer—at least from his first life’s definition of a spell—the elements were so much more than a flick of the wrist and a shout of a name; they tied directly to the martial dao. This was the interconnectedness of this world.

Water, wind, fire, earth, light, dark: spells were merely ways to learn their properties. The true strength of elements lied in combining them with martial arts—a punch that could quake the earth, a swing of a sword that could cleave a lake in two. Cultivation techniques, which focused on a certain ‘path’ to combining martial arts and elements, were thus integral to training.

But he had no choice now. Spells would have to suffice.

At the 3rd rank, Harry entered the Forbidden Forest.

* * *

All he brought with him was water and two meals’ worth of food. It was insane—incredibly stupid—but it wasn’t like he had any money to buy more with. The two meals were saved from lunch and dinner of yesterday, and only of food that didn’t perish as quickly as a salad.

Thus, Harry had full intentions of ‘living off the land,’ so to speak. Because the Forbidden Forest was as popular as any of the Hogwarts training areas, there had been a few pamphlets in the library with quick-and-dirty descriptions of edible and poisonous plants. It was far from a complete study, but a little was better than no information at all.

Start slow and steady. There was no reason to go traipsing into the heart of the forest; he was here to train not compete for herbs or material. Harry stuck around the outskirts of the forest, weaving in through the tree line but always aware of what direction was ‘out’ and which was ‘in.’

Perhaps it was all the knowledge he accrued from multiple lives and universes, but Harry thought this Forbidden Forest resembled little of the one from his first life. No light pierced through the trees above; the greyness of an endless night still permeated through the crowding of underbrush and bark, but he could recognize the individuality of certain plants now, though he could not definitively name them.

There was as much to look out for on the ground as there was to scan for at eye level. Harry moved cautiously, tuned into his environment while he kept his own self-awareness. He sensed something up ahead, and rather than avoiding it, continued on in that direction. If he could find a reliable food source…

It was a slime. Harry sighed inaudibly. Slimes weren’t edible; their substance was so sticky it would stick to a person’s throat, stopping them from swallowing. In the past, desperate practitioners who had eaten slimes would suffocate to death. They did, however, have their uses—they still counted as beasts, and all beasts had something called a ‘soul core.’

Soul cores contained the beasts’ soul energies, and were used for many things in the _jianghu_. Everything from pills, potions, weapons, armor…anything made to possess innate soul energy could have soul cores mixed into their material. Depending on the quality of the core, they could also go for high prices on the market.

That was one reason why practitioners hunted in the unsupervised training areas: not only for training, but also as a source of income. Not everyone at Hogwarts was from a well-off family, after all. It wasn’t like Harry was the exception to some unwritten rule.

The problem was, whenever money was involved the competition would spike. Thievery was rampant. Teaming up only to backstab a partner was also not odd. The _jianghu_ was naturally like this, so even though Hogwarts was neutral ground, this sort of behavior was allowed and even expected. One didn’t survive in the _jianghu_ by being _nice_.

It was exactly as Draco said: the strong trampled the weak.

In this case, Harry had no intention of being a victim, but he also wouldn’t go looking for trouble. He knew he was still very weak, so picking fights with students potentially stronger than him over a little money was not on his agenda. Disciple of Grand Master Riddle? What did that matter? He was the butt of every joke at Hogwarts, and Harry predicted Tom wouldn’t care about these trifling matters anyway unless Harry made it worth his while.

Back to the slime, just because it was one of the weakest beasts in the Forbidden Forest didn’t mean it couldn’t be dangerous. Slimes were aggressive, and the worst possible thing someone could do was leap into a mob of slimes. They could easily congregate and eat a martial artist alive.

Fortunately, this one was alone. While hiding behind his tree, Harry mentally flipped through the spells he knew for a suitable one. Slimes could be of all elemental types, though their element only really mattered if they were powerful enough. These slimes on the outer edges of the forest were not.

“Might as well try out a 1* spell. Fireball!”

His attack slammed into the body of the slime, causing it to give way at the force. However, as slimes were wont to do, it simply reformed itself and began to move in the direction the attack came from. Slimes had no eyes, so naturally they would be blind—they felt their environment using soul energy.

Harry wasn’t dissuaded. This time, he shot two consecutive fireballs, controlling their force so it wouldn’t light the surrounding foliage on fire as well.

The attacks caused the slime to pause for a moment, but then it was moving again with the speed of a giant spider. When it was roughly five meters away, it lunged, and Harry could see a gaping, gasping hole on its underside. There was a hint of spikes protruding from it, moving forward and back as it breathed like of tunnel of thorns.

“Wind Blade.”

The spell hit the slime mid-air, and instead of being absorbed like the fireballs, it sliced the slime cleanly into big chunks. They fell to the ground and instantly began moving toward a center point in order to reform.

Harry shot a fireball at the large blob in the center. This time, the slime melted away and the other pieces stopped moving. A dull orb was revealed in the remaining residue. This was the creature’s soul core.

Harry pocketed the item in his sack before moving on. There really was a huge difference between a 1* spell and a 2* spell!

He wanted to test out his other spells in combat, too. The utility spells he knew were inferior to their higher star counterparts—unfortunate but expected—but they could still be made use of. Knowing only attacks without some sort of defense was just asking to be killed, according to Harry, so he dutifully practiced them as he slinked around the trees.

1* Swift Step, a wind spell that lightly levitated him off the ground a few centimeters, silencing his steps (if done proficiently) as well as increasing his movement speed. 2* Illusion Cloak, a light spell that was more like a weak disillusionment spell from his first life. It was useless in close distances, but from afar no one would notice him. There were a few others, but he concentrated on those two for travel.

This time when he came across a slime, he didn’t bother using 1* Fireball. Instead, he shot right to a 2* Void Sphere. With a little concentration, a shadowless black orb appeared beneath the slime and enveloped it completely, slowly draining the slime of its soul energy.

And by slowly, Harry meant _slowly_. Void Sphere was still only a 2* spell. He could sit here for a good half an hour if he wanted, and given that the slime wouldn’t escape by then, he’d _still_ be waiting.

Well, that was fine. The main purpose of Void Sphere was to hinder enemy movement.

“Fire Arrow!”

The orb melted away, revealing the melting remains of goo. In the middle was another soul core, which he tucked away like the first before continuing on.

Harry could now control up to six arrows. Obviously it would be more effective than a single fireball!

His next encounter was a group of slimes. Harry hesitated—attacking them could grow dangerous quite fast if he didn’t come up with some sort of plan. He chose to climb a tree instead, a simple task for a 3rd rank practitioner. In only a few seconds, he had clambered up to the lowest tree branch, at least six meters above the slimes.

If he could use his earth element, he could’ve raised a wall to separate them using the 2* spell, Earth Wall. Unfortunately, his cultivation for earth was stuck at the very beginning due to his cultivation technique. He couldn’t use any earth spells. None of the other elements could form a physical barrier between the slimes to stop them from amalgamating either…

What to do.

“Well, it’s a little troublesome, but no big deal. Fireball!”

Harry shot a fireball directly down into the center of the mob. Sensing the soul energy, they all leaped toward that single spot and began to fuse together.

“Fire Ring! Void Sphere!”

A ring of fire surrounded the quickly growing slime. The Void Sphere kept the fire contained, so he didn’t burn down the rest of the forest—especially as for his next move, he shot six fire arrows into the beast. In order to break the sphere, the slimes would have to go through the ring of fire. If they didn’t break the sphere, Harry would simply keep slinging arrows at them.

The sphere broke. Harry sighed. “No helping it then. Wind Blade!”

He purposely manipulated the blades to cut along lines that would separate the massive slime into chunks that each held a core. As the goo fell to the ground, they quickly leaped toward each other again in order to reform, but at least it wasn’t toward one center point. This allowed Harry to cut them up again with more blades, and then as those tried to reform, he shot six arrows at six different slimes, melting each.

There were roughly a dozen slimes, so he repeated this once more to down all of them.

Harry dropped off his branch and landed on the balls of his feet. He collected his loot, and then moved on, hoping to run into something edible soon. Sure, the cores could be sold, but what he really needed was food…

Though 2* Void Sphere was a little less useful than he liked (and it was useful), the dark element had the potential to reign supreme here. 1* Dark Pulse could sense nearby energies as long as, of course, it was dark—which the Forbidden Forest definitely was—and this range was larger than his current ability could extend. The more proficient his element, the wider the range, which would keep Dark Pulse relevant for as long as he remained in the forest.

The caveat to 1* Dark Pulse was that it only sensed things weaker or at the same level of strength as his dark element—unfortunately for Harry, the Forbidden Forest was full of beasts stronger than him.

A chill ran up his spine. Harry froze mid-step, and then spun on his feet as he ducked beneath a large, furry body as it flew overhead. He heard a grim, angry growl from the beast as it collided against a tree, but the distraction did not deter it in the least as it circled back around to stare at him with dark, bloodthirsty eyes.

A thin green slime trickled from its long wicked teeth down to its maw, where it slid and splattered against the forest floor. The saliva it had mixed with, significantly thicker, followed in a luminous dribble, and bubbled and sizzled with some chemical reaction where it had fallen to the ground.

The darkness of its coat made all these attributes—eyes, teeth, slime, spit—glow in the perpetual night of the forest. Had it not been for the beast’s grizzly growl and the sharp, pungent smell of death and decay, Harry might not have even known it was there, just floating pieces of a creature unknown staring at him from within the foliage.

Carrion Wolf!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliffhanger!!! Geez how long has it been since I was able to write that........ maybe since The Game? haha
> 
> Anyway, this chapter has a ton of world building that was unfortunately necessary before we get to the action. I hope you enjoyed it, but I won't fool myself into thinking all of you did. This chapter is also shorter for the same reason--if I tried to stuff everything in here, we'd get a hella long chapter that I'd probably be unwilling to write.
> 
> I have also begun laying my trail of bread crumbs for the main, overarching plot (actually I began several chapters ago, but still, this chapter I feel like I have laid enough crumbs to actually call it the beginnings of a trail now). It will either be a really long trail of bread crumbs or a really separated trail of bread crumbs (maybe both), but don't worry, we'll have tons of subplots as you try to figure out who is the main big bad!
> 
> (Hint: we have not seen them yet.)
> 
> Thanks for all your support and I hope you have a wonderful day ^_~


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